Have you ever been all one, in complete silence, in the comfort of your own home, and had a feeling that something or someone is behind you, watching you? Or even more threatening, that you are surrounded by a bunch of people that you cannot see, but you can feel that they are there, right next to you? Well, as sinister as this can sound, you are not the only one. Humankind has questioned every single aspect of their existence since the beginning of time. The human evolution, the existence of God, dreams, and nightmares, superstition believes, history, the end of the world and so on. There is no way to know if all of the presumptions made by scientists, philosophers, and thinkers are true, and that is the greatest gift given to humans. The freedom of thinking about a certain situation and relate it with billions of possibilities, there is no limit for the amount and the length of the paths that our brains can visit. A proof of this is the authentic mental exploration performed by Manfred Kielnhofer.

A self-taught artist, known as “Kili”, born in 1967 in Haslach an der Mühl, Austria, contributing in the spheres of design, film, painting, photograph, and sculpture. Lover of the human body and its various forms and movements expressed in unique sculptures and beautiful canvas. His genuine process of thought is well shown in his 2012 creation of miniature guardians made of plastic. The Guardians of Time, a set of four characters covered by extensive tunics. These guardians are looking down but they have no head. Kielnhofer states that there must be a non-tangible existence that is watching all of us, all of the time.

The artist defines it as a power stronger to mankind, and his intention is to remind us that we are being watched with no mercy. They have no physical body because they don’t belong to the physical world that we all know, and that is why we cannot see their faces. In his art, he deals a lot with the necessity of humans for security and understanding, so thinking that this individuals task is to protect us, is a good way of not entering into a bitter state of uncertainty that most of humans would not appreciate.

All images, courtesy of artist: Manfred Kielnhofer