Rocks Remember: Mountain Tops to Moonscapes x A Guide Through Hue, written by Lewis Bush, published on C4 Journal, 2022
What Eimermacher and Gignoux's books seem to share, is the question of our ability to perceive and judge things beyond our very immediate temporal and geographic circumstances. We are a short-termist species, living brief and remote lives, and we often struggle to see beyond the horizons of our vantage point on the world. Perhaps if we were able to return to more of a pre-modern perspective, and once again see animals, plants and even inert rocks as things pulsating with life and movement, our readiness to destroy them in the pursuit of very fleeting advantage might not be so great. This ability to show us something beyond our horizons, and in doing so reimagine something we believe we understand, is perhaps one of the things that photographic works like these two books can do best. (read more)
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Statement, Sibylle Eimermacher, 2019
In my work I focus on rocks and stones in order to question the ambivalent relationship of man towards nature. We live in an era where we are forced to restore the balance between man and Earth. At the same time we are constantly searching for our personal inner balance on a physical and mental level. For this purpose we draw strength and energy from nature. We extract stones and minerals from their original context, place them into our cultural context and assign them new shapes and functions. In my work I examine the ways in which we seek the connection with stones, through their materiality, energetic properties or as a mirror for ourselves. Questions about the real or imaginary boundary between culture and nature, and about our position in the cosmos play an essential role in this.
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Poses against Gravity, written by Mirjam Geelink about the exhibition Poses against Gravity at Studio Omstand in Arnhem, published on Mister Motley, 2017
Het was zo'n zondag waarop alles zwaar woog: de Leidsche wollen deken, de dichtgemetselde lucht, de stilte van de rustdag. Kortom een dag voor Poses against Gravity, een tentoonstelling die Sibylle Eimermacher maakte in de voormalige Turbinekamers van Studio Omstand te Arnhem met werken van Daniëlle van Ark, Anne Kolbe en haarzelf. Bij binnenkomst verwarmde een gloed van een uitgelichte roze cactus de stervenskoude ruimte. Cactus? De 'low-polyfacetten', een techniek uit de animatiewereld, op het roze beeld van Anne Kolbe konden net zo goed een bergkristal karakteriseren waardoor het beeld plotseling echode naar de gekantelde foto van zwart-witte bergen van Daniëlle van Ark en vice versa... (read more)
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Naked Truth, written by Sybrandt van Keulen for the publication Replacements, 2017
A bare left hand is holding a desert rose, as naturally as looking with the naked eye. What to say about that stone? Can we call it naked? Does that even exist – bare or naked stone? In English, they say ‘naked rock’ or ‘bare stone’. This desert rose is uncovered, uncarved even. Let’s call it naked.
These photographs weren’t taken under a naked sky or somewhere in untouched nature, because the background most closely resembles a smooth inside or outside wall. It’s impossible to decipher precisely where these scenes were shot. But apparently that isn’t relevant for Replacements; the only thing that seems to matter is the relationship between the hand and the stone. Both are clearly something rather than nothing. And both are utterly naked...
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Stone Foldings - Notes on the works of Sibylle Eimermacher and her practice of bewilderment, written by art historian Inger Marie Hahn Møller, 2015
German artist Sibylle Eimermacher (b. 1979) works with a series of replacements – replacements of materials, of logic or defined truths, of art historical determinations, of what we perceive and think of as obvious and indisputable. These fundamental and very subtle replacements also function as a bewilderment – a slight but nagging confusion that is spread towards us as perceivers.
So what is it she does, that can actually be felt as a bewilderment and as a catalyst for new perspectives? At first sight it is not easy to grasp exactly what is embedded in the layers of Sibylle Eimermacher’s work – prints of surfaces of stones – but the confusion is exactly what is fruitful and productive. With the next glance, we see that these beautiful and diverse stone surfaces are not only – surfaces. Upon these pale, pastel-coloured, deep-greyish, rough or smooth, softened or multi-layered, but in all cases finite and impenetrable rocks, is an extra layer of folds. As if the heavy rocks had been folded like a thin piece of paper and then unfolded again... (excerpt from the publication Stone Foldings)(read more)
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Frenzy - Review by Jenny Wilson about the exhibition Frenzy at Nieuwe Vide in Haarlem, curated by Nathalie Hartjes. Published in the publication Mmm, MOHR MOHR MOHR by Frank Mohr Institute - Minerva Art Academy, Groningen, 2014
(...) Sibylle Eimermacher shows several sculptures: carefully constructed pedestals with geometric interventions; delicate spatial arrangements comprising MDF, crystals, a corner cut away; a corrugated cardboard structure balancing on hardboard with a lilac crystal as a counterweight. We are also met with black and white photographic works of isolated pieces of paper with a marble structure, folded in various ways and then laid out on top of a marble background before being photographed. These images are particularly striking in their structural nod to classicism. In the main, Eimermacher's works have a light, fragile quality about them; some even reveal signs of having been handled. They belong to a different space; one that seeks aesthetic contemplation exploring a delicate, post-modern purity. Solitary, serious and touching upon the sublime...(read more)
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Interview by Jenny Wilson about the exhibition Frenzy at Nieuwe Vide in Haarlem, curated by Nathalie Hartjes. Published in the publication Mmm, MOHR MOHR MOHR by Frank Mohr Institute - Minerva Art Academy, Groningen, 2014
(...) SE: The works I show at Frenzy belong to a series of sculptural works entitled Compact Still Lifes, and ones that come forth from this series. They are loose compositions of geometrical shapes, partly naturally and partly artificially forced into this geometric appearance. The different elements are at the same time held together and divided by a kind of pedestal, which I intend to be integrated as part of the piece. These elements are not in a fixed position but subject to disturbances in balance, forces of gravity or irregularities of the floor, for example. This instability, for me, contributes to the awareness about the materiality and shape of the objects, its sensory aspects, the lightness or heaviness of the material. Somehow I feel attracted by the strictness and universality of geometry on the one hand and its playful and fragile aspects on the other... (read more)
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Magnetic Moments. Using the tangible to investigate what is intangible- Some reflections on the works of Sibylle Eimermacher and Lena Katrine & Heidi-Anett by Inger Marie Hahn Møller. Accompanying the exhibition Magnetic Moments at Babel visningsrom for kunst, Trondheim (NO), 2014
(...) 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... (read more)
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Nabije vertes, text accompanying the exhibition Lifted at Air galerie in Lochem. Written by Sybrandt van Keulen, 2008
(...) Sibylle Eimermacher schildert wolken en tapijten met een dubbelzinnig effect. Ze is een wolkenschilder die lijkt op Wladimir uit het beroemde verhaal van Rilke. Gelegen op een oude versleten divan schildert hij in woorden ‘dingen in de verte’... (read more)
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Speelgoed bij onlicht - Over de schilderkunst van Sibylle Eimermacher by Sybrandt van Keulen, 2008
Is in de schilderkunst de mimetische techniek dikwijls gebruikt om onze eigendommen zo aantrekkelijk mogelijk af te beelden, in de schilderijen van Sibylle Eimermacher lijkt deze techniek te worden ingezet om welhaast het tegenovergestelde effect te bereiken... (read more)