Irene Wölfl

Irene Wölfl – The Poetry of the Discarded

Out of a deep empathy for what has been cast aside or forgotten, Irene Wölfl creates timeless new works for today and tomorrow.
Her artistic impulse arises from an almost instinctive aversion to waste — a drive to give what has already been used, found, or left behind a renewed presence. For Wölfl, there is enduring fascination in transforming obsolete, seemingly worthless remnants into something meaningful, granting discarded materials new form and function.
Beyond the aesthetic pleasure of renewal, her practice carries an unmistakable note of social commentary:
in the context of a Western world defined by disposability, Wölfl’s work reminds us that many everyday objects can, and perhaps should, live more than a single life.

Working with what has been lost, abandoned, or forgotten — notes, photographs, letters, postcards, scraps of wallpaper, and other fragments — Wölfl treats these materials as intimate witnesses of lived experience. She approaches them with quiet reverence, aware that even in their fragmentary state they preserve traces of human fate: dramas, romances, dreams, and longings.
In her series “Poetry of Small Things”, these modest relics are transformed into new, enigmatic narratives. The works offer delicate glimpses into past lives — fragments that speak discreetly, yet never fully reveal their stories — inviting the viewer to continue them imaginatively in their own mind.
In “Poems”, Wölfl foregrounds the textual, reworking pages from novels into visual compositions. Other series, such as “Landscape”, “Addition”, “Snippets”, and “behind”, shift the focus towards materiality, tactility, and formal composition, exploring the subtle dialogue between texture, time, and transformation.