Gallery +359 and Charta Gallery invite you to two consecutive exhibition openings!
Join us for the opening of Tension on March 28 (Friday) at 6:00 PM at the Water Tower space in Lozenets, and Plus-Minus at Charta Gallery on March 29 (Saturday) at 6:00 PM.
During both events, you will have the opportunity to meet the artist, who will share more about his creative practice, inspirations, and the ideas behind his current exhibitions in Sofia.
Austrian artist Clemens Wolf (b. 1981) is known for his bold fusion of materiality and concept, where sculpture, painting, and installation intersect. His works explore the tension between lightness and weight, stillness and movement, stability and vulnerability—capturing the delicate balance between control and release.
Clemens Wolf has received several prestigious awards, including the Strabag Artaward (2009) and the Anton Faistauer Award (2011). His work is well known across Europe, as well as in Turkey, Israel, the United States, and China. His pieces are part of numerous private and public collections, including those of Albertina in Vienna, Strabag Artcollection, and Artothek des Bundes Vienna.
This project is supported by To Collect Contemporary Art and consists of two exhibitions: Tension at Gallery +359, opening on March 28 (Friday) at 6:00 PM, and Plus-Minus at Charta Gallery, opening on March 29 (Saturday) at 6:00 PM.
We look forward to seeing you!
28.03 – 15.06.2025 – Tension @ Plus 359 Gallery
29.03 – 29.04 – Plus-Minus @ Charta Gallery
Tension & Plus - Minus – Two Poles of Tension
Text by Domenico de Chirico
The Viennese artist Clemens Wolf, born in 1981, is widely recognized for his innovative artistic approach, which uniquely blends material elements and conceptual models. His artistic research unfolds through various forms, including sculpture, painting, and installation, where the interplay between body and space, the tangible and the abstract, the predictable and the unexpected becomes the beating heart of his creativity. His work, constantly oscillating between pure abstraction and hints of stylized figuration, explores the tension between opposing and diachronic forces such as lightness and heaviness, stillness and movement, solidity and vulnerability.
Since his early years of study at the University of Arts in Linz, Wolf developed a strong interest in decaying materials such as fences and abandoned objects, using them to explore the majestic transformative potential of matter. From the very start of his artistic journey, he focused on the beauty of decay and transience. In this context, ruins and urban spaces become visual symbols, allegories of the ephemeral condition of existence.
Wolf creates large-format monochromatic landscapes with heavily reduced surfaces, much like the old masters. To realize these surfaces, he uses large paper stencils and sprayed oil paint—a process that clearly references his graffiti background. In his recent Expanded Metal Paintings series, however, he uses expanded metal mesh as a brush. This technique gives rise to expressive-gestural compositions, where the structure is determined by the mesh’s distinctive pattern, generating a unique visual dynamic. Here, he explores the relationship between the pictorial surface and the expressive energy of the artistic gesture, aiming to transcend the physical image to create unrepeatable moments. This approach is also evident in his works with parachutes, where the ripples treated with epoxy resin reveal a deeper dimension of his artistic expression.
One of the distinctive features of his art is the use of parachutes, which Wolf recovers, transforms, and shapes into imposing sculptures or painted surfaces. For the artist, the parachute is not just a practical object but a symbol of the tension between the desire for freedom (ascent) and the weight of gravity (descent). Treated with epoxy resin, these parachutes become towering sculptures, revealing a tangible contrast between the material and the treatment they undergo. The resulting folds and modeled shapes reflect a profound study of fragility, balance, and resistance.
His works habitually reveal an almost organic quality, where the surface becomes fertile ground for the continuous interaction between matter and abstraction. Thus, the epoxy resin not only fixes the form but also captures the energy of the gesture, creating glossy surfaces that emphasize the tension between rigor and permeability.
Based on these premises, the two chapters of the exhibition—Tension and Plus, Minus—occupy the space extensively, even along the stairs, gradually deconstructing the idea of ordinary space and expanding it. They are not presented as separate concepts but rather as two symbiotic hemispheres harmoniously connected. Both explore tension from different perspectives: while Tension focuses on physical and spatial aspects, Plus, Minus investigates it as an internal dynamic, a web of relationships emerging through color contrasts and formal interconnections.
Specifically, Tension, set within the unique architecture of the water tower—a space inherently tense due to its stratified environment, heights, voids, and architectural forces—uses the site-specific installation of parachutes stretched, laid, or suspended, surrounded by their respective cords. Notably, the work The Space as a Field of Tension features a parachute spread across the stairwell, making visible the forces of pull and release, while The Curvature of the Space as a Dialogue Surface uses the parachute slider (typically joining the cords) to emphasize the organic shape of the space and the delicate balance between control and release. With Water Tank as a Spherical Counterpart, an immersive installation creating the illusion of infinite space—almost like a starry sky nestled within the tower’s tank—Wolf explores the contrast between water, the sky, and gravity, blurring the boundary between inside and outside.
Tension as a State Between Forces connects the exhibition to the perception of opposing forces such as weight and lightness, constraint and freedom, resistance and vulnerability, inviting visitors to explore the crucial transition between these opposing states—emblematic of the complex nature of our sensory perception. This body of work creates tension fields where materials and imaginative scenarios first clash and then integrate, triggering deep, conflicting emotions and reflections on the human condition. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “the struggle between two forces is the condition of all existence.” In Wolf’s work, this struggle undoubtedly becomes the creative force constantly fueling his artistic vocation.
Parallel to this, the exhibition Plus, Minus—through a fluid chain of works originating from the symbols + and – —further explores the visual and conceptual contrast of opposites, using a limited palette of red and blue. These primary colors serve as metaphors for polarity and opposing forces, eternally in tension. Here, the gallery entrance is characterized by Barriers and Transitions, structures reflecting the duality between separation and connection, anticipating the theme of polarity—expressed simply through positive and negative, addition and subtraction, as well as dynamism and stillness—as the foundation of existence. Temporal Dimension and Artistic Process highlight the evolution of creative ideas over time, with expressions that complete and transform themselves in a conscious dialogue between past and present.
In this sense, Tension and Plus, Minus are not two independent approaches but rather extensions of one another, both part of the same artistic research rooted in the idea that tension manifests both as a physical confrontation between opposing forces and as a state of reconciliation and balance between them. Like the Heraclitean principle of panta rhei (“everything flows”), which states that everything is in flux and nothing remains unchanged, Wolf’s work fits perfectly into a worldview where matter’s vital momentum and the forces it harbors are in constant metamorphosis. His works not only reflect the intrinsic mutability of existence but also explore the interaction between all these opposing states. Each of the two exhibition paths amplifies the idea that our relationship with space, the body, and natural forces depends on our ability to adapt and respond to eternal change.
This principle speaks not only of the constant movement of things but also suggests that change itself is proportional, perceived differently depending on one’s perspective. Ultimately, Clemens Wolf’s works explore this very relativity of time and space, revealing how every moment of tension and transformation is unique and unrepeatable—an unparalleled interpretation of a never-ending flow. In this sense, his art not only challenges our linear or seemingly logical understanding of reality but also invites us to recognize the beautiful and powerful inevitability of the mutability of our being-in-the-world in the Heideggerian sense, where every experience and perception is never separate from the context that generates it but is an integral part of it, always in motion. Here, the material’s working process coincides with the unpredictability of the outcome, and the outcome with the transience of astonishing spatiotemporal abstraction.
Clemens Wolf, born 1981, lives and works in Vienna, Austria. Since his graduation at the University of Arts Linz, he is fascinated by dilapidated material like fences in front of dumps, abandoned warehouses and unfinished buildings.
In his latest works, he sets his main focus on the process of transformation haunted by his own history. Old discarded parachutes (he is a passionate parachutist) are transformed into sensual objects. After they are immersed in epoxide resin they are layed out in tondi, hung or stand up as sculpture or stretched on frames as paintings, every crease being arranged meticulously and finally left to dry.
When we examine Clemens Wolf’s obsessive and mysterious work, it’s obvious that the frontier between painting, sculpture and drawing places a great importance. The surface of the pieces with its powerfully vivid palette, reveals a world that is almost organic. While the artist sees the fabric’s contractions as a stylized representation of decomposition and decay, the resin he uses to hold the folds in place gives the works a distinctive glossy aspect and an intensity that is brought out by the delicacy of the coiled up parachute cords. The choice of such a lightweight and an aerial object as the parachute conjures up the fundamental notion of gravity.
He has won several awards, including the Strabag Artaward in 2009. and the 2011 Anton Feistauer Award. His work is well known in Europe as well as in Turkey, Israel, USA, and China. His works are part of numerous private and public collections, such as those of the Albertina in Vienna, Strabag Artcollection and the Artothek des Bundes Vienna.
the locations
Plus 359 Gallery was founded in 2017 in the building of a preserved water tower in the “Lozenets” district of Sofia, Bulgaria where eight exhibitions are organized annually.
The tower was designed by the German engineer Franz Salbach in 1903 and completed in 1929. The building was built on the highest point in “Lozenets” and has four floors, one ground floor and a tank, which is used as a place for special projects. The architecture of the building is intended to serve not only as a space for hydro engineering but also as a watchtower.
+359 Gallery’s exhibition plan is focused on several programs that include a curatorial practice, which encourages interaction with contemporary art professionals from the country and around the world. The team of +359 Gallery organizes talks with global visual artists, lectures and specialized events in the field of contemporary art and culture, publishes books and catalogs with the idea that a commercial gallery should participate in the process of education and development of the public.
Charta Gallery, founded in early 2022, is located in the heart of the city of Sofia. The gallery has a long corridor, a spacious hall, a courtyard and a garden. Charta’s exhibition plan aims to present a permanent display of both classical and contemporary art. At the same time, being engaged in the cooperation and support of initiatives in the field of art publishing.
Charta Gallery believes that art is a space for freedom of expression, it wants to keep in constant contact with people who enjoy this freedom and use it to contribute to contemporary art. The gallery presents and works with both established and young authors. Charta Gallery presents self-published catalogs and editions featuring a wide collection of new and rare books.
The etymology of the name of the gallery comes from the ancient Greek χάρτης (khártēs), which means paper, papyrus.
