The New York Times on Harald Plochberger "You Make Me Hot – Sappho":
Harald Plochberger finds his muse in the ancient writings of the Greek poets Archilochos and Sappho.
Most of his pieces in this show have the same physical design: two small framed works are set behind glass in one large oversized vertical frame. The top work holds a phrase by one of the poets, printed on seven transparent layers of plastic. The building up of clear layers dulls the letters more and more, the further back in the layered sheets they appear.
The bottom piece shows the same words in another seven layers. But this time, the artist uses his own set of geometric markings to represent the individual letters of the alphabet. For example, A is a solid black vertical; B is half black/half white vertical; and so on. The markings look somewhat like computer bar codes.
Archilochos’ phrases – “against the wall fists on hips they leaned in a fishnet of shadows” or “truth is born as lightning strikes” – when linked to their geometric counterparts, put you right there, in the momentarily quiet edges of a brutal conflict. Sappho’s writings – “sometimes she closed her eyes all night long” and “dawn with small golden feet” – fall at the other end of the emotional spectrum, where hearts and minds find pleasure and lust.
By creating shapes from the poetry, Mr. Plochberger heightens the meaning of the words, an ultimate compliment to the poets.
D. Dominick Lombardi, Sept. 26, 2004