Ambient Fluid Sculpture |
deutsch |
Christa Steinle
(Excerpt from Katharina Heinrich’s catalog Ambiental Fluid Sculpture, Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum)
… As far as Katharina Heinrich´s sculptural installation is concerned, it is obviously a postmodern sculpture in the expanded field, as she has expanded the logic of modernism and has reversed the dominating cultural cirumstances and artistitic ways of production. Her sculptures do not have a pedestal either, but they are either ground or hanging sculptures. The place of the sculpture is not the pedestal and the ground anymore, but it can be any object. The sculpture can be hanging over a bar, be lying on a car, be worn on the body, can form a tent just as the work which is exhibited in the Studio of the Neue Galerie or it can be cloaked over the railing, the stairs and lanterns as it is in the baroque staircase there, or in the end it can even fall down like a curtain. Instead of being ornamntal, the sculpture becomes ambient. It adapts itself to the surroundings without giving up its independence.
If the sculptures are used, they lose their autonomy and become parasites or take over a protective function as does the sail-like tent. They are woven from soft, dynamic synthetic materials, are related to the body, not only because of the skin colour, but also because of their “user-ability”. Fluid means liquid as well as airy-one group of works is inflatable. Heinrich´s sculptures approach the fluid state, consequently get their forms through the body, through the movement of the body, through the rhythm of the breathing, through the movement and usage of the observer. The fluidity of the sculptures derives from the flexibility and suppleness of the material. Instead of being static objects they are flexible and moveable; one could talk of fluid protagonists. This flexibility and variability give the sculptures some resemblance to life, which is not only created through the form of the surface or the soft, variable material, which comes close to organic materials, but also the dynamics and mobility, which is reached through the wider range of materials, remind us of organic biomorphous systems. Instead of being immovable they are movable, instead of being final, they can be developed. The sculpture could be woven on endlessly.
The movement of weaving, the method of crossing create a principle of infinite activity. The sculptures could expand themselves endlessly in time and space. This again gives the sculpture the quality of being alive. The rhythm of repetition, the pulse of life, as it is laid down by the rhythm of breathing, of the heartbeat, of the cardiac pumping of the blood. The structures and nets produced by weaving are seen as an illustration of every other system (social system, computer network, the human mind etc.). The movement of weaving results from crossing (materials) and is a very stringent sculptural procedure. By crossing two lines, by weaving a two-dimensional kartesian coordinate system of verticals and horizontals, the classical parameters of space structure, the x- and y-axis, comes into being. The network is raised from its state of two-dimensionality as it twists spatially and thus creates a three-dimensional construction.The flat plastic tarpaulin becomes a sculpture because of its fall of the folds respectively its spatial folding. Heinrich develops an aesthetic and formal language which expands the concept of sculpture with new materials, new locations and new ways of using.
(Excerpt from Katharina Heinrich’s catalog Ambiental Fluid Sculpture, Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum)
… As far as Katharina Heinrich´s sculptural installation is concerned, it is obviously a postmodern sculpture in the expanded field, as she has expanded the logic of modernism and has reversed the dominating cultural cirumstances and artistitic ways of production. Her sculptures do not have a pedestal either, but they are either ground or hanging sculptures. The place of the sculpture is not the pedestal and the ground anymore, but it can be any object. The sculpture can be hanging over a bar, be lying on a car, be worn on the body, can form a tent just as the work which is exhibited in the Studio of the Neue Galerie or it can be cloaked over the railing, the stairs and lanterns as it is in the baroque staircase there, or in the end it can even fall down like a curtain. Instead of being ornamntal, the sculpture becomes ambient. It adapts itself to the surroundings without giving up its independence.
If the sculptures are used, they lose their autonomy and become parasites or take over a protective function as does the sail-like tent. They are woven from soft, dynamic synthetic materials, are related to the body, not only because of the skin colour, but also because of their “user-ability”. Fluid means liquid as well as airy-one group of works is inflatable. Heinrich´s sculptures approach the fluid state, consequently get their forms through the body, through the movement of the body, through the rhythm of the breathing, through the movement and usage of the observer. The fluidity of the sculptures derives from the flexibility and suppleness of the material. Instead of being static objects they are flexible and moveable; one could talk of fluid protagonists. This flexibility and variability give the sculptures some resemblance to life, which is not only created through the form of the surface or the soft, variable material, which comes close to organic materials, but also the dynamics and mobility, which is reached through the wider range of materials, remind us of organic biomorphous systems. Instead of being immovable they are movable, instead of being final, they can be developed. The sculpture could be woven on endlessly.
The movement of weaving, the method of crossing create a principle of infinite activity. The sculptures could expand themselves endlessly in time and space. This again gives the sculpture the quality of being alive. The rhythm of repetition, the pulse of life, as it is laid down by the rhythm of breathing, of the heartbeat, of the cardiac pumping of the blood. The structures and nets produced by weaving are seen as an illustration of every other system (social system, computer network, the human mind etc.). The movement of weaving results from crossing (materials) and is a very stringent sculptural procedure. By crossing two lines, by weaving a two-dimensional kartesian coordinate system of verticals and horizontals, the classical parameters of space structure, the x- and y-axis, comes into being. The network is raised from its state of two-dimensionality as it twists spatially and thus creates a three-dimensional construction.The flat plastic tarpaulin becomes a sculpture because of its fall of the folds respectively its spatial folding. Heinrich develops an aesthetic and formal language which expands the concept of sculpture with new materials, new locations and new ways of using.