Karl Hikade, who was born in 1942 in Vienna and has been the interim director
of the Masterclass for Painting in the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna since 1994,
belongs to that group of painters who were given the epithet "Sensibility"
during the second half of the '80's.
In his exhibition in the Vienna Secession, Karl Hikade attempts a synthesis of
plane, body and space with the help of illusionist painterly techniques and abstract
compositions. In this aesthetic organisation of space, the picture becomes a relief
- a form of spatial presentation. Specific aspects such as free-hanging (7 cm
from the wall), the effect of light and shade, the corporeal three-dimensionality
of the pictorial surface and spatial interaction, allow Hikade not only to progress
from the two-dimensional painted surface to an architectural spatial construction,
but also to a spatial experience of the pictorial image.