2024-01-01 04:01:19
This year might be an interesting but also a stressful year for Tone Fink. In any case, it started off well: Today, January 1st, the draftsman, painter, object maker, performance and film artist, who lives in Vorarlberg and Vienna, celebrates his 80th birthday. On Epiphany, ORF 2 will broadcast a film portrait of Tone Fink at 6:25 p.m., followed by exhibitions and a book regarding his life’s work. The public celebrations do not take place until July.
Strictly speaking, the Tone is only turning 50, because until 1974 the man, who was born in Schwarzenberg in the Bregenzerwald, signed with his birth name Anton Fink. It was only a journalist who gave him the idea of the stage name. Anton had studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, with Maximilian Melcher and the great Max Weiler. “He was very resolute and I was rather shy. And I’m not a painter – he recognized that,” the artist remembers in the APA interview regarding hours of working on the drawing paper until he finally perforated the material.
Color has never had much attraction for Tone Fink, but he has a lifelong friendship with paper. “For me it’s all regarding paper,” he says, who feels like a “violator and a doctor” all in one when dealing with the delicate medium. Ultimately, he wants to “not only label the paper, but also harass it.” His almost tender treatments sometimes leave barely visible traces, but he can also be rougher in his work. In any case, the way he leafs through the tomes he made especially for him reveals an almost physical relationship.
His mother was always creative, says Tone Fink and talks regarding playing the zither, crocheting and sewing. The father was a blacksmith and wagon blacksmith, which was probably reflected in his own penchant for all kinds of mobile objects. Tone Fink taught at a primary school for a year, then qualified as a teacher for visual arts and crafts training and worked at a middle school in Vorarlberg for four years. Then he moved to Vienna and has lived as a freelance artist ever since – with all its ups and downs. “Being able to make a living from it is also an art,” he laughs.
In addition to Vienna, Fink also has studios in Fußach on Lake Constance and in Schattendorf in Burgenland, where many of his large objects are stored in a former dance hall. “The Paper Dancer” is the name of Ingrid Bertel’s 25-minute portrait film, which “Österreich-Bild am Urlaub” will broadcast on ORF 2 on Epiphany at 6:25 p.m. “It’s a crazy anniversary film,” says the artist happily, who can also be seen on a rolling paper throne with the paper crown on his head. Because Tone Fink also loves performance.
A tour of his Viennese warehouse takes the visitor back to the “plaster period”, in which large vehicles, sculptures and thrones were created, or, with imaginative masks, brings back memories of processions and actions with which Fink mixed up festival weeks and festivals. You should also be able to feel something of this when the opening of a Personale takes place on July 14th in the Bregenz Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis and the following day a festival takes place in the Angelika Kauffmann Hall in Schwarzenberg.
At the same time, a new 400-page book designed by Kurt Dornig will document his life’s work to date. About ten people are working on “solo.tone,” reports Tone Fink. “The book is a brutal amount of work.” There will certainly be a chapter dedicated to his phase when, as a founding member of the animated film association asifa austria, he taught his drawings to walk. Never once more has he achieved such a response as with his film “Narrohot”, which was broadcast on the ORF “Kunststücks”. “A lot of fun – but an awful lot of work,” is how he sums up this group of works. 1,500 A4 drawings in two minutes!
His Viennese gallery Ulrike Hrobsky, which exhibited his canvases with thorn-like dried drops in the exhibition “Tone Fink: farb.bekenner – linien.strichler” five years ago, is organizing a solo show on April 2nd, as is Galerie Petra Seiser in Schörfling am Attersee is preparing an exhibition. But he will also be represented with a concrete chair in the sculpture garden in front of the main entrance to the Venice Art Biennale, he reports: “I’m really happy regarding that! Tens of thousands of people will walk past it…”
(SERVICE – “The Paper Dancer”, January 6th, 6:25 p.m., ORF 2; www.tonefink.at)
1704083644
#Multiartist #Tone #Fink #celebrates #80th #birthday