With the eyes in the sky
by Francesco Butturini

Two images come to mind when I think of Josef Kostner’s works: his slight, yet penetrating grin and the landscape that seems to be born of that grin. They are two apparently distant existential facts, which are actually deeply permeated with each other, because in order to understand his sculpture and graphic art, you have to understand the time and situation in which the sculpture and graphic art where created.
They seem to be the fruit of desperation, or of a dark vision of the world, pervaded with hostile mysteries, deformed shapes that have emerged from their inner selves, fears and anxieties.
But none of this is true.
Kostner’s sculpture and graphic art are the fruit of a knowing vision of the world and life, of a subtle and ironic attention that acknowledges the roughness of everyday existence and life. They are not expressions of the fear of it and do not turn daily life away, with its anxieties, expectations, pain and joy. They accept everything with the wisdom of time and memory, which cancels nothing and mitigates everything.