Reviews
To Katharina Gun Oehlert
Ideally, the artist is a mirror of contemporary life in his time. He (or she) takes advantage of the achievements of the culture in which he (or she) lives, takes part in social events and focusses them in his (or her) person. This poetisation leads to a kind of naivety towards emotional involvement.
This is the artist’s sensibility.
The creative side of this artist is her vitality, the preoccupation with content, the personal involvement of being. If we succeed in describing this aspect of her artistic activity we learn something about the character and intention of her products. This personal aspect of creativity shows the affective quality of the products exhibited, the “soul material”, so to speak, which they contain.
This evaluates the expressiveness of the artist.
Katharina Gun Oehlert is a dancer among artists. Her pictures show that rhythmic determination and desire for rounded form, her willingness radically to lay bare her soul largely determine the design of her paintings and objects. They are dramatic mises en scène, poems
The subtle choreography of Oehlert’s artistic products corresponds to the dramaturgy of dance transposed into the silent object. Her work represents the movement of silence – exhalts seriality as rhythm and breath – and ritualises sense to become autonomous meaning. The material worked quietly becomes blurred and is transformed into the uniqueness of never recurring experience, is captured and cultivated.
Her mises-en-scène of objects radiate a profound respect.
K.G.Oehlert has dramatic access to the psychology of her fellow human beings, whereby her development towards the artist’s approach has led her to respect rather than dissect the struggling psyche. Her works reveal a highly concentrated receptiveness for the silent cry.
K.G Oehlert has an unsually profound understanding of the ritual dimension of art. At the same time she points to a shaman-like dimension of current art - to a psychotic representation of the individual steeped in culture. Experience of theatre as the integration of the cultural object in ritual acts. Realisation of the subject as the core element of cultural expression.
This artist is not primarily someone who knows exactly where she is going but someone who improvises like the long-distance runner who constantly asks himself new questions, the quest for meaning, primary work almost like a prayer.
The highly personal exchange between her own creative outburst and craftsmanship and academic discipline leads in the final analysis to what is called personal style, the cultural identity of the artist. This leads to the almost monstrous craftsmanship of her weaving and the fact that she confines herself to the autonomous work of art which stands alone as though it were the last of its kind.
Robert Bosshard, 1996
Human images
Plaster casts of human bodies appear naturalistic, they are individual, even personal. Only the fact that they are restricted to parts of the body, a colourful frame and the arrangement of the parts themselves differentiate the objects created in this way from an accurate reproductive imitation of nature. The works thus created develop a personality of their own, a highly personal statement. This gives them an autonomous existence as works of art. The fragmentary character of the individual cast elements leaves the finished overall work open to interpretation. In addition, the artistic device of the fragmentary running through the whole work creates a constant sense of vulnerability, wounding or loss. The installations are therefore able to evoke emotions relating to the recognition of emotional states on an associative rather than pictorial level.
The floating arrangement of the installations “Fermate” (1995-1999) and “Gleichgewicht” (equilibrium) (2000) suggest not only suspension and weight but also ascendance and floating. This impression is continued without interruption into the large-format paintings and paper lengths painted with acrylic paint. The coating of paint is very delicate; the lacquer-like application suggestive of shading which creates an impression of plasticity is not disturbed by internal detailing. The form is not given concrete expression by internal detail so that any interpretation must remain incomplete. These figures also appear to float in space. They seem fragile, the shapes suggesting bodies. They are, like the sculptures of Hans (Jean) Arps, an “invention” of natural forms. As a result of this similarity of their nature to the real world the observer feels directly addressed. For this reason these beings can seemingly be recognised.
The shaded contours are in reality highly reduced outlines. They generalise and abstract in the manner of a straightforward drawn outline. Like these they require the observer to complete the picture in his mind analogous for example to the pictures of Norbert Frensch where a trace of light shining from black dammar resin lacquer creates a suggestion of a rounded form which the observer imagines as a metal dish in a black space. Here the relationship to the plaster casts is clear. The artist arrives at her central theme again and again using different techniques.
Katharina Oehlert produced these forms in advance in woven pictures and subsequently cut them up and re-created them between black silk warp threads in the woven fabric on the loom. The delicately adumbrated form becomes an element in the overall continuum of the weave. It loses its autonomy by being integrated in the picture as a whole and becomes a detail in the narrative landscape of the picture.
Katharina Oehlert’s “1000 Years in Hilden – Paths through Time” (1999-2003) is an example and at the same time the climax of this idea of artistic design. An abundance of imagery more or less inspired by historic relics is united by freely invented and in part naturalist, in part surrealist figures to form a historical picture of a new type.
Katharina Oehlert invents bodies, invents symbols. She creates a whole repertoire of images which she rearranges over and over again and uses in a narrative as in a language of images.
A development, which in the pictures “Sonnengöttin” (sun goddess), “Zwiegespräch” (dialogue) and “Cherubine” goes back to its origins and reinterprets them, spans the earlier works “Cello der Jacqueline du Pre” (1984) and “Gefrorene Kindheit” (frozen childhood) (1994) and includes the already mentioned representation of the history of Hilden.
All the themes mentioned make it clear that man and his emotional states, his fears and dreams are always at the centre of Katharina Oehlert’s imagery. This is the nucleus of her artistic ideas. In this approach she follows Oskar Kokoschka. For him it was not a question of drawing the hired model in a given pose but a human being, a female being, whose beauty was to be felt, seen and recorded. In this he followed Edvard Munch who in 1889 wrote in his diary : “one should no longer paint interiors and people reading and women knitting. They should be living people who breathe, feel, suffer and love. I shall paint a series of such pictures. People will understand what is sacred in them and take off their hats as if in church.”
Rolf Jessewitsch, 2005
A visit to my aunt’s studio – the artist
Katharina Gun Oehlert
This is not my first visit to the studio of the artist Katharina Gun Oehlert where I am now encountering her new work: large-scale, black and white, abstract, interwoven pictures. Suspended from a metal rack, hovering just in front of the wall, they dominate the space. Taking my time to watch the images more closely, a process of perceptual differentiation sets in:
- Black and white – there is something more to these pictures than that. One has traces of yellow, the other shows a hint of red. The black itself unfolds in different hues of black and the white in different shades of white. Some of the black is glossy and reflects the light, while the white responds to our gaze withmute acceptance. There is a dynamic variety of differences and nuances of blacks and whites, not a simplified black-and-white dichotomy. - The images are not figurative, but occasionally a figure appears, emerging from a cloud formation or from the shadow of amountain. “Somebody lives here”, the artist once described this phenomenon. Her paintings, while often containing fantastical figures, do not tell their stories through recognisable characters or suggestive gestures. They invite us to trace and discover content and meaning within and between the shapes and colours.
- During this process it is important to follow the creative process of the picture. We are looking at paintings that have been cut up and then woven together. This elaborate activity requires great care. The enchanting aesthetic quality which is the result of this activity is based on physical effort, uncompromising precision and time. The beauty of these works demands to
be taken very seriously.
Seriousness is also a characteristic of the empty, naked human torsos from the installation Gleichgewicht (balance) (200-2005). The russet coloured plaster bodies, huddling together in a corner of the studio, appear like a group of critical onlookers. Their quiet presence fills the room with their ancestral claims to new generations coming and going. The artist – my aunt – works with the weight of the past and a view of the future. In an intimate, confiding conversation we – niece and aunt, theoretician and artist – discuss her work.
She told me that
- the creative process only begins after several hours in which nothing really happening in the studio.
She
- needs to be completely empty, free from prejudice, expectations, hopes and critical voices to be able to start work on a picture.
While describing this ‘not-knowing’, the French word bête comes to my mind. This word also signifies ‘animal’. Imagining my wise artist-aunt as a bête amuses me, the keenly attentive art-theoretician niece. In her direct activity on the image carrier the artist executes what we see as animal consciousness, often assumed to be non-conscious – namely pure spontaneity which follows an instinctive urge.
So it does not come as a surprise that I think of animals. There are many animals in her pictures. I remember that the studio has always been home to animalistic spirits hiding in feathers and furs. While I type these words into my computer I am sitting on a fur. This is a gift from my aunt’s studio, a memory from a different territory, a materialistic find from a different mental space with different traces and sensations.
Just as a plant brings forth flowers and a tree apples (to refer to the philosopher Alan Watts and his popular, lucid treatise on Buddhism), so the artist brings forth images – without any premeditated conceptual and theoretical guidelines. The result is a pictorial explosion and expulsion, uninhibited and imponderable, like the Big Bang. Every time something new emerges, different possibilities open up.
Now a white landscape stretches above a black swamp and fills the picture, now the shapes develop from the centre and crystalize in a way that some of the surface seems to remain almost untouched. A black fracture, running diagonally from top to bottom like a flash of lightning, dominates the centre of another split image. In another picture two vague figures can be seen in dialogue with each other – a narrow, black figure on the left in an encounter with a rotund phantom on the right that has traces of bright red.
During the process of weaving the artist decelerates her spontaneous expressions and contemplates them.
Cause and effect
are recognisable in this process, she explains to me. One weft follows another, she adds, until the complete image emerges. The woven image, which looks and breathes like skin, is arranged in dense horizontal lines, one below the other, like a text. Yet the cutting-up process, which constitutes the elements of the picture, reveals that there is no complete image, and never will be.
There is neither black nor white in the singular. We often refer to our perception as ‘black’ or ‘white’ in a simplifying manner. The pictures teach us that there is no ‘entirety’ either. Our intellect only grasps parts and fragments. The woven image comprises both ends – spontaneity and shaping, immediacy and contemplation, before and after, fragment and entirety…
Chaos and order
This was the original title of the exhibition, the artist told me. Cause and effect, chaos and order – these terms refer to humans and their dealings in this world.
Cause and effect, chaos and order – this is also something that refers to me personally. My visits to the studio since my childhood have left a profound impression on me and have led to my following inmy aunt’s footsteps into the world of art.
This is where warp and weft meet to be woven together.
Dr. Michal B. Ron
The Hilden Panorama
Song: swarming into the balmy wind in the fragrance of meditation on this dream from the past interwoven with life in the present day.
Dance: thread by thread / colour upon colour /along the entire breadth/ arranged in the interplay of above and below / stroke by stroke of lines intertwined and placed one alongside the other!
Text: no other artistic tradition is so closely linked with the place where it is created as weaving, which is bound up with everyday life, piling up the prose of life layer upon layer to form narratives in condensed poetic form, finally symbolised in the formation of sediments typical of their time. In myth the local culture evolves out of an original weave on which one rests and which one is never to forget. Accordingly the ornamentation woven into the cloth serves uniquely to capture sensed traditions on a subjective level and leads directly to what is fundamental - the enjoyment of art which assuages the fear of death; its colourfulness speaks of the sound of familiar nature: grieves for wasted time and takes pleasure in an early level of insight. The interweaving of the present with what has been endured links the unmastered past with a promise and extends the historic tapestry to include heroism, respectability and at the same time the mediocrity of truth and veracity. Thus, art creates the possibility of transforming obsolete tradition in the spirit of present-day fertility into a representation of the local, into beauty and belief in the future of maternal meaning collectively constituted.
Realisation: one can only admire the lightness with which Katharina Gun Oehlert rolls out her eight tapestries entitled A Thousand Years in Hilden, the elegant weightlessness with which she hangs the historical material before the walls of the town hall and achieves a veritable out-of-this world tour de force: that is, to glorify without falling into the trap of historicism, to document without indulging in positivism, to create a myth without contravening historical fact, to stimulate consideration of the unfathomable, without sentimentally siting the pregnancy of meaning in the past and without blurring crises rooted in this place in an act of idealisation.
This work is strikingly original because the artist’s approach (in the pre-awareness of political innocence) urges the observer to recollect and does not misuse the past to glorify the status quo. The eight-piece tableau is magnificent. In its entirety it shows the panorama of nature interspersed with symbols of local governance. On the left, in the primeval earth, archaic and subterranean, whence increasing towards the right initially indicated by animals then by human beings, an early settlement appears with its documents facing the public like gravestones arranged alongside each other in earthen red. The centre of the picture (as viewed from the throne between the mountains of files) also constitutes the central perspective of a Hilden Loreley gazing at the Rhine. Immediately to the right, roughly tapestries 5 and 6, things grow darker towards the dawn of the modern age which uses the gloomy atmosphere to build huge machines with which to overwhelm nature – both progress and an apocalyptic vision. Up to the war, without victory, autobahns as walls, factories and guns bind together to form an agglomeration, while above psyches filled with hope soar towards the heavens. Finally, on the extreme right, in the exceptional situation of the present day, the picture takes up the theme of the transition from the Bergisches Land to the Lower Rhine; in the background bridges are being built and the illusion of a mass of files evoked by lateral shadows forms the site for modern settlements. A multi-layered network of historic compromises dreams of a cosmopolitan utopia in the currents of totalitarian power. And here at the end of this illustrious ballad, after untold pain, at last a happy message of peace thrusts itself into the foreground in the lower reaches of the present day, in the warm colours of communality against the white background of tolerance, held together by aesthetically soft forms of floating anthropomorphic animal figures circling against time…the whole in the bright light of optimistic thoughts which cast a spell on the observer.
Applause: In these times when life in small towns becomes ever more anonymous the desire to commission a contemporary tapestry capturing the thousand years of local history is certainly laudable and the city of Hilden made a good choice when they gave the commission to Frau Gun Oehlert because as a local artist she embodies everything in one person: as an experienced artist sure of her style she was able inspite of a deep sense of shock at the crimes in Kosovo, terrorist attacks on the civil population, battles fought in Afghanistan and the distraction of the invasion of Iraq to concentrate fully on the realisation of her work for three years; at the same time she proved her worth as a courageous moral arbiter who was able to transform every single piece of historical evidence which came into her hands with a full sense of responsibility, in spite of the paradigm change at the millennium, from a generalised value judgment into the norms of the local conscience; thirdly, she proved an outstanding artist whose ingenuity and creative skill cast a spell on every area in which her power of expression was permitted to unfold. A magical stroke of luck for Hilden. Soon the first dealers specialising in tapestries will come like pilgrims to the Town Hall to inspect the original of the Hilden Panorama and they will be followed by well-heeled cultural tourists between Schmalenbach and the collection at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne having been persuaded to take a trip to Hilden to see these wonderful paper tapestries with their own eyes. As a consequence the true public which is not made up of small private groups of connoisseurs will be made aware of the magic of the exceptional work A Thousand Years in Hilden and will storm the Town Hall in their enthusiasm. What a wonderful dream!
Robert Bosshard, 2003
Ariadne’s Threads
Eight pictures in portrait format hang alongside each other. They were created separately. Thousands of weft threads made of silk and paper and black warp threads went into the creation of each painting in the course of several weeks and even months of continuous work at the hand loom. The motifs are not separated by frames. The composition, colours and individual motifs extend into the adjacent picture and unite the eight pictures in an overall representation.
Comparable series of pictures range from altarpieces to comic strips. In a total of three years’ work Katharine Oehlert has created a polyptych which is unique both in form and content. The threads and dyed paper strips tell of the history of the town of Hilden. This commissioned subject matter is a challenge in itself. The wealth of events of a thousand years overtax both memory and the possibility of narrating them in a succession of pictures. Even reduced to essentials this history fills an entire library. All the things that apply to artistically relevant representations of the history of towns and cities cannot serve as a model here.
When one stands in front of this series of pictures, the eye begins to wander and a cosmos of individual and recognisable objects and symbols reveal themselves. Only gradually does the impression of diversity give way to the impression of the underlying calm of the composition.
Large individual shapes span the overall design and smaller individual details move, so to speak, over the entire surface. Distinct but subtle colour contrasts never cover up the essential character of the drawing which is a basic element of the entire series of pictures. The abstract and thus generalising drawing gives concrete expression to the forms in such a way that they can be read.
The first two individual pictures consist simply of white, grey and delicate ochre areas which form a background to clearly accentuated drawings of objects. Relics of the past such as the groundplan of Hilden as a circular village around a green, a drawing of the outlines of shards and groundplans of the oldest church in Hilden are arranged without apparent order next to the elegant lines of the handwriting of old documents. Reading the images from left to right silhouettes loom with rounded skull-like heads and introduce movement, direction and, for the first time, dynamism and development. The beginning of a history. Thus the foundations of a mythology which has an individual character thanks to the use of specially created symbols or symbols used in an unusual context rather than traditional icons have also been laid. The upward and downward movement of the overarching lines and the use of bright and dark areas of colour create ciphers of light and darkness. Since the poetic paintings of Paul Klee and documenta 5 the observer has been familiar with such a concentrated form of experience in pictorial designs.
The third and fourth individual pictures are striking above all in that the iridescent ochre shades of the first two pictures now give way to brown and green contrasting with cobalt blue shades linked by motifs.
The major lines of the composition are continued, literally towering up, and the skull-like caps first appear bottom left, looming up towards the right; a blue-lipped fish-head repeats a similar skull shape on the left, the face given to the “fish” also repeats a round shape which is to be found slightly higher up in the second picture. Architectural elements now create the illusion of depth. At the bottom a row of medical instruments begins and engraved steles framed like gravestones with sharp black outlines and grey shading are at the same time reminiscent both of the remains of photocopies and of factual illustrations of scientific objects in books from the 19th century or earlier. Their shape, like their content, is symbolic. The portrait of Wilhelm Fabry and two birds clearly dominate this picture, where the two birds accentuated in shades of red convey emotion and experience. A scallop shell appears and the dream-like quality of Katharina Oehlert’s narrative style begins to emerge from this repertoire of motifs which combines a private symbolism and sign mysticism in a veritable cultic montage which has its precursors in art from Max Ernst to Michael Buthe.
In the fifth and sixth pictures the large lines of the composition bring highs and lows into the work. Grey colour sequences which tend towards black contrast with radiant yellow, green and blue which on the right descend into grey. In addition the lefthand picture with the cypress-like upright green shuttles of the loom against a background of dome-like shapes in front of which a fabulous creature wearing a crown is encamped is with its atmosphere of sepulchral silence reminiscent of Boecklin’s painting “Toteninsel”. At the top left a black, fractured wedge-like shape threatens to destroy the idyll: an image of the first great crisis of the world. The hill-like structure in the background ends on the right of the sixth picture in an abyss which divides the entire polyptych: the second war of this world, conveying the fundamental experience of evolution and collapse. This pictorial cosmos succeeds in moving from the mythological idea to immersion in subconscious dream worlds and becomes subjective, individual and thus personal: coming to grips with history.
The seventh and eighth picture surprise the observer with their more transparent colour spaces: back to primeval instincts, one is reminded of the first two pictures by the composition which is now completely free of heavy shapes. The scenes breathe a sigh of relief and are supported by the ascending shaded line of the A 3 autobahn. The centre is occupied by satyr-like dancers with goats’ legs. These are an allusion to the coat of arms of one of Hilden’s twinned cities and are an example of the incorporation of tradited symbols by means of adaptation and variation. A cobalt blue bird flies over panels composed of children’s wish lists amidst mythical beaked creatures. The bird takes up the dynamic narrative and points to a mandala-like symbol which, with the mythical creature at the bottom, completes the entire pictorial sequence on the right hand side.
There is no central perspective embracing Katharina Oehlert’s world of imagery, no frame enclosing individual scenes, no compositional element forcefully yoking together all the scenes. A closer look at these individual scenes, however, reveals a network of links and relationships between the individual areas and motifs within the picture.The artist has woven a fabric of continuity. Beyond the formal aspects the observer learns that for example the documentary writings appear as eternal steles, memorial gravestones, elements of architectural craftsmanship such as round arches or abstract sequences defining the picture. Portraits can be interpreted as concrete depictions of ideal concepts or dreams, and the abstract lines of contours framing individual scenes have a dramatic narrative function in relation to human destiny. The different levels of meaning fuse and merge and the division between the meaning of a motif and given areas of life is removed.
This view of the homogeneity rather than disparate nature of different spheres of life and history is reminiscent of the philosophy and spirituality of Indian peoples. The symbolic content of their images was nourished by clouds, animals, gods and ….colours. Sand and artistically woven materials formed the supports for their images. Symbols evoked the meaning of the pictures without completely revealing it. Access to the meaning of some of these symbols was barred by a “security code”, which is also true of the mandala, the crowned mythical beast and the pair of birds in the world of Katharina Oehlert’s imagery. Transparent coloured spaces in which the background is often left white where light forms a backdrop to the motifs and a special use of scene-related colour are further reasons for seeing this polyptych as “Indian”. On the other hand, the fact that the artist evokes visions from the abundance of objects, that she weaves and creates a fable and at the same time encodes with considerable intimacy and affection a world of memory and emotion, means that this very personal imagery of the artist is psychologically akin to the paintings of Marc Chagall.
The special importance of this work of art lies not only in the application of the technique of interweaving different materials, or in the intellectual achievement of the realisation in arduous and meticulous steps of the overall idea for the design, which for months existed only in the artist’s imagination, but above all in the successful and entirely individual imagery chosen for this theme of a thousand years of the history of Hilden.
Rolf Jessewitsch, 2003
“1000 Years in Hilden – The Paths of Time“, a tapestry
History bears witness to what happened in the past and is happening in the present with regard to both mankind and nature. The study of history has developed its own methods, language and ways of thinking. It has defined aspects for examination and linked them to other sciences, not only in order to describe, but also to research the connections between causes, sequences of events, developments and effects.
When it explains facts, illuminates meanings, history becomes interpretation that is influenced by cultural-spiritual conditioning, the thirst for knowledge and objectives.
Language is its essential mediating agent.
Art is a medium of perception with a fundamentally iconic structure that is accessed via visual perception. Yet there is no pictorial science which corresponds to linguistics, even though for thousands of years humans have made themselves understood by scratching signs and pictures in wood and stone, filling them in in colour, distinguishing them by structures. In contrast to the study of history, art is not interested in causes, sequences of events, developments, i.e. the factor of time. As an object of perception, it is defined by space, in which it presents itself, and by timeless presence, from which it offers its open iconic interpretations.
How did Katharina Gun Oehlert approach the incompatibility of the two positions mentioned in the title? Being an artist, it goes without saying that she stripped the historical elements she found on her exploratory search through Hilden’s history of their historical context and transformed them into autonomous motifs in her tapestry, arranging their sequence and relationship not in a scientific context, but within the iconic context of the superordinate whole of the tapestry.
This artistic freedom to treat historical documents in a way that does not destroy their “readability“ was only be achieved by making them part of a great parable of unfathomable nature, so that they became the tangible open “ground“ on which history took place. Thus, she first devised a coloured space for her picture that covered the entire surface in warm earth colours, structured this with clods of earth, cracks and crevisses that are interrupted by the luminous blue of flowing water. On the left, from the depths of unknown times, the surface of the earth develops out of a light “non-colouredness“ in which the sun stands as a symbol of life and the beginning. To the right, the space on the tapestry ends in a similarly pale, light colour: the future in the sense of the unknown, undefined. The artist places the greatest contrasts in colour, the luminous intensity of the dramatic light-dark, in the middle of the tapestry, the place where the knowledge of history will be portrayed in its most distinct and richest way.
The woven “skin“ of this portrayal, which is a parable of the ground upon which the abstract signs of Hilden’s history were imposed, is materially sensuous and of an intense tactile quality. The special weaving technique invented by Katharina Gun Oehlert gives the woven texture a skinlike softness and warmth, real, palpable folds, ripples and compressions that break the light and cast shadows, causing the colours to vibrate.
In this way, Oehlert achieved a dimension of materially real presence that gives the designed surface a vitality and a life of its own which is open to ever new interpretations. Many things can happen on this ground: traces can be found again and again and be recreated. The surface is not static, but adapts to the imagery of events in a lively and dynamic way from one part of the tapestry to the other.
The artist then spreads out an abundance of copies of historical sketches, groundplans, registers, letters, seals, documents, medallions, portraits, tools, machine parts, etc. from the archives of the city of Hilden over the prepared ground of the painting which fit into it, accentuate and overlap it. This second, abstract dimension of signs and contents which can be understood on a rational level reduces history to a non-generalized presence which does not, however, dominate the ground of this work of art.
A third dimension explains the tension and creative richness of this tapestry. There is a visual leitmotif that counteracts the title and historical facts, an idiosyncratic decision made by the artist. The impact of the composition of this extensive work shows unmistakably that Katharina Gun Oehlert does not regard abstract history as the most important element. Where the facts become blurred, space is set free for the imagination.
How many fantastic figures hide in the contours, shadings, movements of the coloured ground. Almost every contour of the surface anticipates the origin of new forms. Birds, fish, shells, the moon present themselves in a dominant fashion. How threatening the iron horseshoe, how poetic the fabulous figure of the boy with the crowned horse's head.
The blue bird, rising from the terrible abyss of this century’s dark history, storming away into the future, is more meaningful than the signs of industrial development and the ornaments of new streets and motorways.
And the enchanted lovers in the circle of childhood wishes, under the symbol of utopian creativity, in which half technology and half nature fuse together, and which stands for the defiant belief in a more human future.
All the figures are similar in form, like parts that have been extracted from the painted ground, and are transformed into elements of the other dimension – a dimension of emotion, of imagination, dreams, magical relationships, mythical memories and their primal images.
They are all more meaningful and more expressive in the context of a canon of icons and motifs and forms than the historical motifs portrayed.
If we again relate the three creative dimensions of the tapestry to one another, Katharina Gun Oehlert's work contains a bold statement:
The first dimension of the powerful, materially real presence of the surface of this work of art, is a parable of the earth and nature, the basis of creation, of the ground on which history takes place.
The second dimension of abstract-rational signs is a parable of the presence of man in time and space, read in the traces he leaves as evidence of his thinking, working, creating order, of his desire for power and creativity.
The third dimension of the creation of forms is a parable of the realm of the spirit and soul with their ancient themes of feeling and imagination, more closely akin to the ground than history in a concrete sense.
Rosmarie Kesselheim, 2003
FERMATE meets water tower
270 metres above Solingen hang the white torsos of pregnant women suspended against the sky. Surrounded by the folded glass cupola of the former Gräfrath water tower, which the lighting designer Johannes Dinnebier converted into a workshop in 1998, the dynamic flight of these heavy, powerful female bodies seems intent on piercing the transparent walls of the tower.
In strict and solemn triangular formation 28 massive female bodies whose bellies swollen to their utmost limits proclaim the new life within, float towards the heavens, both forward-thrusting and at one with themselves.
The rising line of the seven rows of voluptuous bodies appears to defy gravity. On the ground beneath the sculpture, echoing the graceful formation of the massive torsos, a triangle of white goose feathers, soft and trembling at the slightest breath of air, suggests a bed and a place to rest.
An archaic force emanates from this profoundly gripping installation by Katharina Gun Oehlert. The white bodies of plaster and gauze, moulded between 1995 and 1999 from women in the final stages of pregnancy, reproduce delicate, slender, statuesque figures whose individuality is attenuated by the uniform white of the material and the shared fact of their pregnancy. They are the overwhelming expression of the eternal recurrence of new life itself.
FERMATE is the name given by the artist to this group of suspended women in the final stages of pregnancy. This is intended to convey the suspension of time, awareness of the moment at the end of a phase before a new one begins, full of anticipation of what is to come.
The profound symbolism of the group, whose number points to the 28 days of the menstrual cycle and reflects the magical number 7, leaves the observer spell bound. The thrusting strength of this phalanx of constantly recurring new life is breathtaking. Anyone who senses the archaic beauty of these swollen bodies is filled with silent awe.
The tower as the exhibition venue and a symbol of the aggressive thrusting male principle is here the sanctuary of the pregnant torsos whereby the glass of the cupola offers transparent protection and support against the outside world.
The harmony of this space and the sculpture, which the Hilden artist created in her studio and not in the tower itself, is truly overwhelming.
Ingeborg Flagge
Fermate
Fermate
time standing still
enduring the „now“
at the end of a phase
totally overwhelmed
anticipating a new beginning
great expectation
In contrast to the current trend in contemporary art, depicting the world of mankind as segmented, self-destructive, consisting of incompatible contradictions, virtually doomed, Katharina Gun Oehlert’s work sets a positive, integral vision of life, indicating powerful emergence and growth, stability, continuity and hope.
Twenty-eight pregnant, female bodies, formed from plaster and gauze, individually shaped, life-size torsos, suspended in mid-air, form a dynamic, forward-thrusting procession in the shape of the ancient magic sign of the triangle, a symbol associated with woman since time immemorial.
Our perception is shocked by the bold confrontation with the nude, pregnant, female body, by the breaking of a taboo, which even today perceives this body as being not suited for public display, often even unseemly and not beautiful.
At this stage our customary mode of perception requires adjustment. The beauty of these bodies does not obey the dictates of fashion, it breaks free from the cultural norm and replaces it with an archaic aesthetics, in stark opposition to the fashion-oriented ideal of the slim, young and therefore „beautiful“ body.
The bodies in Katharina Gun Oehlert’s sculptural group exude maturity, strength and voluptuousness, the shapes are extended to the utmost limit, their enveloping skin like a hypersensitive membrane. We sense the new life growing within, the tension expressing its urge to be born soon.
All the bodies have the same expression, ancient and knowing and far removed from the here and now. Twenty-eight pregnant women are twenty-eight individual beings, each with its own effect, each body making a separate statement. We can distinguish between the aggressive, the assertive, the tender, the introverted, the maternal, the mature, the statuesque, the at-peace- with-herself, the burlesque, the cheerful and so on.
One quality applies to all equally strongly – they are at one with themselves.
As a result of this self-approval and self-acceptance, the artist was able to combine them within the unbelievably compact, meaningful shape of the triangle. This order directly represents continuity and multiplication of life to come, throughout time. The triangle of female bodies is an absolutely overarching symbol, removed from the present, emerging from the past and pointing to the future.
The combination of numbers – twenty-eight bodies in seven rows represents the monthly female cycle as well as the ancient magical number seven – the rhythm of years in which all human beings change, and the generations to come – for all time.
To release this procession of women from the static, to set it in motion, to give it drive and dynamics, it has not been placed on the ground, but each woman is suspended from fine wire and thin dowelling in the same way.
The whole group floats 120 – 180 cm above the ground, sloping upwards slightly by 10 cm in each row from back to front. This increases the intensity of the forward surging movement. Faced with this formation one is visually overwhelmed by the irresistible, unstoppable phalanx of female torsos.
On the ground a 10 cm deep, even layer of duck down mirrors the triangle, suggesting a bed or camp, sterility and softness, an absorbing, protective element. Shadowlike, the white feathers capture the surging bodies, calming them, holding them, whilst re-establishing the basic order.
In choosing the title FERMATE, Katharina Gun Oehlert provides us with the key to her work: „From the complex process of being pregnant, I wanted to capture the moment of maximum suspense, maintain it for the duration of the creative process, capture and hold its incredible presence in my work – the moment, just before a new life emerges, when one holds one’s breath in anticipation of the event, still full of hope, in spite of any possibility of danger and potential evil.
We may criticise Katharina Gun Oehlert’s work or we may be overwhelmed by it. It is impossible to remain indifferent. This sculpture is a great work. It is simple, forceful and powerful. All the elements, material, formal and compositional interrelate most stringently.
This inner harmony, created by the interplay of the white torsos, their natural order, the well balanced distance from each other and the feather triangle, the play of light on the bodies, creating a connecting structure between them and the minimal, concise selection of materials – all completely convincing to the point that one gives credence to the work without hesitation.
The complete absence of aesthetic or decorative elements renders the subject matter neither fashionable nor opportune, but equally convincing and credible. Katharina Gun Oehlert’s work is further enhanced in its importance because it is not derived from anything, it does not borrow other ideas, formal or compositional. It is unique. The work derives its autonomy from the basic theme – the moulded human bodies. Never before has the pregnant woman been made the subject of art. This is the very first time, executed in all seriousness, a concise symbol, which is unforgettable.
Rosmarie Kesselheim, 1999
Equilibrium
Artistic activity develops in the ordinary everyday social context, not from nothing but from the materials selected from the model of reality. This artist illustrates present-day being from the theme of transience. Initially within the protection of her own personality, she looks for representations of sociability in familiar streets and in the public spaces whose functioning she knows, moving into zones of loneliness and stations of asylum-granting care. What a struggle to find material to create a representation of the trivial world in all its grandiosity! – The wooing of models, models which give credibility to the picture – the effort made to woo children so that their love can also find expression in this likeness, the old man with his familiar geniality accompanying us from our youth onwards who is to be given a memorial……the housewife from next door with her nugatory but nagging and deepseated worries……the salesman whose wit always flashes in such a marked and likeable way. …the melancholy working-class woman from the factory halls puffing and panting under the burden of everyday life, who excites a profound feeling of compassion….or the efforts to induce the advocate who is used to giving orders to show generosity, to act as a model in order not to isolate the less fortunate from smug complacency……
Within the framework of the soberly designed artist’s studio among the functional buildings of an industrial estate - the place where this artist rules supreme - the curtains are drawn as a protection against indiscretion, in order that the ritual of the creative process may be completed without inhibition. The light is carefully controlled, the linen bandage has been primed, moistened, covered in plaster of Paris, the room temperature has been raised in a welcoming fashion, joyful, feverishly nervous, expectantly awaiting implementation. The models are received in meditative calm and tranquillity. They have their proportions and measurements taken without knowing the artist’s yardstick. They entrust a cast of their appearance to her. Abandon themselves to mysterious and unknown artistic purposes. – And the author accepts them, absorbs within herself the representation of realities, anticipates their transformation into Art, their longing for the expression of love and pain, eros and suffering. Cast after cast of the torsos of such alienated biographies are transposed into the ensemble, into the mystery of the picture.
In the artistic realisation of the work the fifty casts are transformed into sculptures which detach themselves serenely from the models and which are vaguely reminiscent of classical excavations of ancient memories evoking the unconscious of other ages. Skilful painting in seemingly monochrome earthen tones magically transforms the figure-like shapes into a melancholy glowing ensemble inclining towards the abstract. The naked bodies attracted by tension at once static and nervous, disguised as a collective, clad uniformly to become an archaic primordial horde, in dignified serenity. The artistic figures which have been elevated from the subject to the object group themselves intuitively under the creative coercion of the artist. Quasi ceremonial, implicitly echoing a myth of humanity, life breathed in to celebrate their present life in the consciousness of man’s finite nature.
The work is now presented in an exhibition within the framework of a hospitable museum-like building in a passage-like room suitable for the generous presentation of art, promenading, floating in the form of an installation, amorphously elevated from any physical interaction, the group of figures glimpsed through a quiet room, makes visible what in reality is not visible: the equilibrium of existential being and the primordial basis of life; the instability of the origin of life and liveliness; volatile happiness on the border between certainty and the unfathomable. – Fertility, bursts of development, the wages of maturity and protection in fragility, associated in numerous anonymous forms, emerges floating from the hustle and bustle of the everyday, for the moment of observation, passes through the zone of transience into the past.....moving as art, steered by the inner core of reality into the pre-conscious zones of knowledge, gives material expression to a fictional world concentrated as in a dream, linked by our common perception which defines us as contemporaries.
Robert Bosshard, 2000
EQUILIBRIUM
As in her large installation FERMATE from 1998 Katharina Gun Oehlert uses the ancient form of the torso to give expression to a difficult theme: “man between birth and death”.
The torso, this body part, stands as a pars pro toto, permits reduction to the essential, forces perception to extend and complete. Thus Katharina Gun Oehlert avoids any superficial realism, narratively illustrative subjectivism, or the decoratively ornamental which is concerned only with itself.
She creates the torsos by reproducing the form of the bodies; each conceals an individual.
The windings of the plaster bandages made of sacking form the body shapes, at the same time clothe them, strengthen them like a coat of armour and end in sashes, trains and aprons, often pointed and sharp-edged like weapons. They fall as only wet material can fall, while the body forms a mass in a state of tension, pulsating breasts and bellies.
The colours give the bodies a warm bone-like hue like polished wood or ivory or red and brown shades which suggest skin and warmth. Black shadows and outlines impart structure and firmness.
The figures float in space – suspended from gossamer wires – without touching. Each moves weightless between night and day, love and hate, life and death, wanders aimlessly, certain and pre-ordained.
The figures journey, unstoppable, upright, serenely calm, conscious of transformation and the finite.
The expressiveness of the entire horde flows from the reproduction of individuality.
The beauty of the work lies in its intensity
The work expresses a highly archaic emotional state:
To like oneself, simply to be as one is, as one is meant to be in ones own true being, as a counterpoint to all that is modish because that is the fount of vitality, courage, strength and the ability to love.
Rosmarie Kesselheim, 2000
What makes the dawn red ?
The installation "Was macht das Morgen rot?” consists of roughly 1000 sheets of paper which hang down on silver threads suspended from the ceiling of the exhibition area. Beneath them there is an old children's bathtub placed on a stool. This installation is a continuation of her work "Fermate” and as in "gefrorene Kindheit” (frozen childhood) Katharina Gun Oehlert has again used objets trouvés as the basic material for her new installation. There is an empty, much-used children's bathtub on a stool. While in "Fermate” a bed of feathers formed the base of the installation, the base of this new installation is defined by a layer of small white pebbles.
Oehlert uses the pebbles to symbolize the paths of the brain which from birth to youth register the impressions essential for life. The children's bath is associated with caring for a baby, which is bathed for the first time directly after birth. The process of bathing is not dissimilar to the situation in the mother's womb, which is why babies on the whole enjoy being bathed. For the artist the bath has a protective, atmospheric quality. After all, every child is bathed.
Above the empty bathtub like a protective imaginary roof hang the sheets of paper or letters. They are from children to whom Katharina Gun Oehlert put three questions: "What do you desire for yourself and mankind?”, "Is there anything you are afraid of?” and "With whom or where do you feel safe?” Using this questionnaire the artist first had access to schoolchildren in classes in Germany. Then personal contacts made it possible for her to interview school classes in Siberia, Poland, Israel, Norway, England, USA, Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, South Africa, Cambodia, India and Nepal. The answers provide an insight into children's psyches.
Often children desire peace for themselves and for humanity in general. By contrast, other answers seem frighteningly lonely "I want everything for myself, nothing for others!”. More differentiated answers deal with "otherness” which the children would like to see accepted. In reply to the second question many children say they are afraid of war, their own father or mother, God, teachers, the dark night, death and illness and "that nothing of me should remain”. Children either experience a sense of security when they are with their parents or not at all.
All were questioned anonymously but gave their age and country on the questionnaire. Most of the children also gave their first name; only very few omitted it. The originals, which were copied in order to provide a uniform size for the installation, are in the artist's archives. The answers reflect children's perspectives on their situation in a near or distant corner of the world. Katharina Gun Oehlert uses her questions to explore what makes people capable of love and emotion and to become a human being who respects creation and others in their otherness. The title of the work is oriented towards the future "Morgen” - dawn, morning or tomorrow - which should be red, alive, worth living and liveable both for us and for children.
Whereas in the past the artist invited people to her studio to allow a mould to be taken of their bodies, in this installation Katharina Gun Oehlert takes a new approach. Her questionnaires go out to people in their own country and allow them to reflect in the immediate context of their own lives. In principle, this method of working resembles a therapeutic approach, which helps to clarify self-image. At the same time Katharina Gun Oehlert asks in a sociological sense what makes the future (Morgen) possible, what man is doing to his environment. Instead of interviewing older people and asking them what was advantageous or disadvantageous in the past, in questioning children Katharina Gun Oehlert has introduced the future into her work. In a special way this makes her art a medium creating awareness. Awareness is the main purpose of her work. If her works reach the awareness of the viewer, she has achieved her aim to create art with both flesh and spirit parallel to human beings themselves.
Colmar Schulte-Goltz, 2008
