Through colour, reflection and movement, Schaberl turns the apparent simplicity of the circle into an evolving perceptual experience.
Robert Schaberl (b. 1961, Feldbach, Austria) is an Austrian artist whose work investigates the possibilities of colour, light and visual perception. Since the early 1990s, he has concentrated on a body of work he calls Zentralformen (Central Forms), establishing the circle as the defining structure of his artistic practice.
Schaberl constructs his paintings through a meticulous process in which numerous thin layers of colour — in some works up to seventy — are applied to a rotating support. The use of interference pigments allows light itself to become an essential component of the work. Depending on the angle of observation and surrounding light, colours shift, emerge and recede, producing an image that can never be experienced from a single fixed viewpoint.
Although formally reduced to a circular structure, the Zentralformen generate remarkably complex optical experiences. Their surfaces oscillate between matt and reflective, monochrome and polychrome, material presence and apparent depth. The viewer’s movement therefore becomes integral to the work: as one moves around a painting, its chromatic and spatial qualities continually transform.
Schaberl’s work has been exhibited internationally and presented in museum contexts including the Albertina Modern in Vienna, the Museum Liaunig and the Victor Vasarely Museum in Budapest, as well as exhibitions and art fairs across Europe, Asia and the United States. His work is also represented in public and private collections internationally.