Born in Lower Austria, Michael Höpfner has been hiking through remote regions of the world such as the plateaus in Tibet, the river courses in Albania or through valleys in the Alps for twenty years. He walks through the landscapes on foot in week-long marches and captures them photographically, in drawings and diary notes. Höpfner sees his hikes as a search for human relationships with nature; in his works he tells of silence, silence and loneliness, of existential experiences, physically and mentally, of simple dimensions such as time and space, emptiness and distance.

"Walking, as I do, is always an artistic act that revolts, protests, wants to rewrite the experience ... also against contemporary ideological and social views," emphasizes Höpfner. “For me, walking is also evading existing patterns. As an artist, I didn't want to go to the studio, but rather to look for the lost relationship with nature. This estrangement has always been a drive for me. "

In close cooperation with Michael Höpfner, an art book for the staff in the Landesgalerie Niederösterreich was created by the library of the province with texts by Lorenzo Giusti and Günther Oberhollenzer and a conversation that Günther Oberhollenzer had with the artist.