Magnetic Moments. Using the tangible to investigate what is intangible. Some reflections on the works of Sibylle Eimermacher and Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett/Heidi-Anett & Lena Katrine.
By Inger Marie Hahn Møller, MA in art history
A magnetic moment is a volatile clash in time and space, a moment of coherence and balance, the moment where the attraction grows bigger as if an invisible force is drawing things towards each other. The magnetic moment is where things meet and come together in the same magnetic field, where things are in harmony as if in a current loop or in the magnetic orbit of the planets in the solar system.
Magnetic Moments is also the title of a collaborative exhibition of German artist Sibylle Eimermacher and Norwegian artist group Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett/Heidi-Anett & Lena Katrine at the exhibition space Babel in Trondheim, September 2014. As if in a magnetic field the works of these diverse artists are spun together in a meeting that speaks of attraction, invisible forces, and relentless investigations of what is intangible and abstract via very tangible materials as stone and body. It speaks of neglect of the (gendered) body, of the weightlessness of stone, and of the sculptural approach to things around us. Although a scientific term, magnetic moment also speaks in a subtle and poetic way in the hands of Sibylle Eimermacher and Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett. In Magnetic Moments the artists are primarily showing photographic works, however it’s not (only) an exhibition of photography: The prints and photographs serve more as a subtle kind of objects, a sculptural approximation, and as a documentation of performative acts.
Sibylle Eimermacher exhibits a series of prints of surfaces of stones, but upon closer examination we see an extra dichotomous layer, as if the massive stones have been carefully pleated, like an unfolded piece of origami or paper, but made of solid rock. Traditionally in art historical terms stone and marble are the iconic materials of the sculptor, a massive and eternal material that is carved into form. Eimermacher’s use of stone as material is rather a comment on the art historical understanding of stone as something imperishable, than it is following this tradition. In Eimermacher’s work the massiveness of stone is dissolved and transformed into something quite different. She embeds weightlessness, fragility and elusiveness into the heavy materiality of stone. She is more concerned with the surface and its structures, its nuances, its reflective properties than in its tangibility and eternity – what actually in an art historical perspective were the values inherited in stone as material. She makes a topsy-turvy on art history, transforming what once was thought of as eternal and massive into its opposite, a piece of paper, a print that potentially will be blurred and erased over time.
In the series of videos, Balancing Stones #1-3, we see pebbles balancing on fingertips, arrested in a moment of perfect balance, but slightly shivering, propagating the vibration of the fingers and the body – like otholits in our inner ears, sensitive to every movement we make and essential for our balance and orientation in the world. The tiny vibrations that are passed on to the pebbles, capture the light, reflecting it in the surface of the stones, making the stones crystalline and weightless in this subtle and refined act between stone and body. Along with the prints and the videos Eimermacher’s private collection of stones is also exhibited. Pebbles from quarries and walks, unmanipulated bits of nature brought into the white cube of culture, where we see them in a new context and with a new perspective – like a personal cabinet of curiosities that make us wonder what is what (what is art, what is nature?)
Both Eimermacher and Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett are following up on the art historical development beginning in Modernism and evolving in the 60s’ land art, body art, performance art and feminism, where sculpture has changed from being something made in eternal material and exalted onto a pedestal to become something much more perishable, freed from material connotations, placed directly on the floor, bodily and in relation with you and me. Eimermacher goes so far as to transform the classic sculpture into paper, a pure abstraction on print, a volatile weightless crystallization. The stone is freed from its original connotations; it has been opened up onto new meanings and significations.
The same goes on with Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett. At Magnetic Moments they show three photographic works, depicting their bodies in sculptural constellations. In their work the body is the sculptural material. On one hand there is a transformation from stone to body in flesh and blood following the tradition of the 60s and 70s’ (feminist) body and performance art, and on the other hand they still play with the classic motif of the sculpture – the (female, naked) body. But they play with the roles, and the body is turned from merely object to active subject. In traditional art history the body is a (gendered) object, but through the performative transformation of Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett the body becomes something entirely different. In some senses the body becomes abstract. The female body is abstracted from its traditional sexual connotations; those meanings are no longer inherited in it. The two bodies closely embracing each other in the works of Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett eliminate the sexual body and its stereotypes, and a new kind of body or form is created. In Landscape (Scenery) the bodily form becomes a softened landscape abstraction in delicate colours. The body is still tangible, though, just as stone, but it is not so much the body in flesh and blood, as it is the body as concept and the many layers of signification and intertextuality inherited in the body as material/motif throughout art history, that interests Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett.
In Black, Green, White Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett are placing their body sculpture in relation with the room and the scene that surrounds them. On the one hand the presence of the room is drawing our attention to the theatrical aspect – that it is a bodily performance that has been documented photographically. On the other hand the simple outlining of a room (a blackened wall, a green window and a white panel) is intensifying the process of abstraction that is essential in Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett’s project – an abstraction from the sexual and political stereotypes layered in the naked female body in order to make us see this body (and this gender) anew. The title in itself is pointing towards this abstraction – instead of naming their work “Nudes in black, green, white interior”, they simply call it Black, Green, White. In a split second we see an abstract modernist painting by Rothko or the Colour Field painters, or a geometric painting by Mondrian with pure forms, colours and lines. The bodily form in Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett’s work no longer equals the (sexual) connotations that have been politically, historically and socio-culturally encumbered onto the female body.
In Pattern we see a large piece of textile, a kind of patchwork, held up in front of the two artists as a curtain or a veil. The patchwork is made of pieces of cloth, worn-out garments and different kinds of fabric loosely stitched together creating an abstract unit of rectangles and colour fields. A certain transparency in the textiles allows us to catch a glimpse of the bodies behind. Once again Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett are referring to the art historical feminism dating back to the 70s where traditional female crafts were included in the artistic projects to shed light on the oppressed role of women in art and culture and to create a space for women in art history. But in Pattern the patchwork also becomes a second skin to the bodies obscured behind it – worn-out clothes from other bodies and woven textile with memories embedded create a new and many-layered signification ascription to the body that is no longer only sexual, but indeed very culturally formed. The patchwork is created by the artists who during three months have been sending it forth and back between Trondheim (Lena Katrine) and Aarhus (Heidi-Anett), each of them adding a new piece of cloth each time it was in their hands. A tiny bit of me and a tiny bit of you, that becomes something new and more. Just as in the body sculptures where the two bodies together are more than just two naked female bodies. A new form and a new codex are created in the works of Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett. In Pattern the female bodies are transformed and dissolved into an abstract pattern, fields of colour and cloth. The female gender and the female tradition of patchwork are abstracted into something else, and it gives us the opportunity to gaze them anew and to eject what we thought was stable and indisputable.
In a magnetic moment and throughout their transformative and manipulative approach onto subjects we regard as solid and unchangeable, Sibylle Eimermacher and Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett suggest us to see the world with fresh eyes and to reconsider our anchored understandings of deeply culturally signified subjects and materials.