LAVISH HORN | 5 - 28 June, 2022
Lisa Biedlingmaier - Clare Goodwin - Una Szeemann
With LAVISH HORN, Ruettimann Contemporary brings together three female artists who reflect on the topic of the continuous circle of life and death, the present, and the past. Lisa Biedlingmaier, Clare Goodwin, and Una Szeemann each explore the feelings and sensations bygone days may generate, and investigate our approach regarding matters of life, death, and the subconscious. By plunging into the essence of the three accomplished artists’ positions, the unifying components of the individual works become ever more perceivable.
Knots and Layers
By applying macramé, an ancient knotting technique, Lisa Biedlingmaier represents ever-emerging topics within her work: The various knots stand for our life experiences that oftentimes turn out to be a mental baggage we constantly carry around. Biedlingmaier titles her works after energetic codes that aim to offer the viewer the possibility to untie these psychological knots. Complementary materials, such as hard-edged plexiglass, porcelain, mirrors, everyday objects, or iron and wooden bars emphasize the themes Biedlingmaier touches on via a particular work. Rearranged, these same elements can stand for another topic which is to show that the artist visually illustrates the psychological and energetic ever-changing layers humans are made of.
One of the works Lisa Biedlingmaier features in LAVISH HORN is titled ZULEILABO (2021). The energetic code of this installation is meant to free the toxic load of our emotional emissions and to clear the negative memory stored in our sexual organs. Therefore, ZULEILABO explores sexuality, procreation, as well as mortality. The flesh-colored felt is natural dead matter whereas the black ribbons are a reminder of suspenders symbolizing pulsing life. Simultaneously, the black colored strips refer to death. The heavy iron bar, used in construction sites, weighs the seemingly fragile macramé structure down. ZULEILABO invites the viewer to think about life’s cyclic movements, its joys and burdens. Every emerging life contains a part that is dying off, implying that beginning and end, growth and decay are ultimately one and the same.
Immortalized Banana Flower
Una Szeemann, parallel to Lisa Biedlingmaier, also uses dead organic matter such as leather, hair, plaster, copper, bronze, bones, rope, and dried plants. Oftentimes, her large-scale objects dangle from heavy metal chains into the exhibition space which grants them an almost persona-like aura. Szeemann’s practice is based on research within the realms of anthropology, psychoanalysis, including hypnosis, and biology. Through the various materials she strives to bring forth the invisible that doesn’t exist any longer but has left traces in the present.
In October 2021, Una Szeemann set out to dry impressively large banana flowers she had gathered from Tegna, her second domicile located in Ticino (CH). Following a slow drying process, Szeemann handed the dried strongly diminished plants to the foundry to transform them into long lasting bronzes. After the casting was completed, the foundry smelled of banana, as if the banana flower’s ghost was still hovering in proximity to its dead shell.
In LAVISH HORN, Una Szeemann lays four cast bronze sculptures, titled The Birds Said You Move I-IV, on a plinth bearing the character of table on which presents are laid out. Thus, the banana flowers not only underwent eternalization through the foundry process, but they are also presented like offerings. The formerly splendid organic banana flower, meant to perish after florescence, has become a valuable symbol for both abundance and fertility. There is evidence that the banana was already part of the human diet in the seventh century b.c. According to an old legend from the Myanmar region, the humans mimicked the birds’ habit of eating the fruit. Hence, one of the earliest names used for the banana, to which the title of Szeemann’s sculptures alludes, was: It was the birds that told it.
In terms of botany, the first florescence, known as the banana heart, is also the last as the pseudostem of the banana plant dies. Although offshoot will normally have developed from the base so that the plant as a whole survives. However, the fact that the pseudostem, or corm, dies after only one reproductive cycle somewhat sanctifies the banana flower and underlines Una Szeemann’s sublimating foundry procedure.
The banana flower turned bronze has taken on an almost otherworldly appearance. The stem below the banana fruits leading to the massive banana flower that now resembles the knob of an ancient weapon, looks like a backbone. By turning blossoming organic matter into a dead but ennobled material, Una Szeemann has shifted the viewers’ focus. It is no longer placed on the loss of past beauty but on the new attributes meant to last forever.
Ghosts and Whispers from the Past
Clare Goodwin’s practice appears to be located within in a purely abstract minimalist as well as constructivist tradition. This seems to be the case throughout the hard-edged geometric painting compositions, whether materialized as large-scale wall painting installations, on clay, wood or paper. However, the meticulously painted elements in her body of work are in fact based on a deep interest in the human soul, nostalgia and formal image building. Clare Goodwin depicts her reality and her past through abstract representation. Goodwin’s motives and color compositions are triggered from a British working-class upbringing in the nineteen seventies and early eighties. By falling back on gathered materials from these eras along with her own personal memories and lived experiences, she enables narrative possibilities with a future presence.
In 2022, Goodwin set herself as a goal not to exceed the total of twelve small paintings (40 x 30cm) per year, evoking the annual cycle. In LAVISH HORN, Clare Goodwin shows the six small scale paintings she created during the first half-year period, January to June. In addition, Ruettimann Contemporary features several ceramics titled Whispers. With this series of clay works, starting in 2018, Goodwin opened up a new chapter by inviting different techniques and materials into her predominantly painterly œuvre. The ceramic whispers are single fragmented elements implying extracted forms from her paintings and thereby becoming paintings in their own right. As she applies her hand, used to paint meticulous hard-edged shapes, to glazed ceramic, her painterly language enters another field of the unknown, hybrid sensibility and craft traditions. With these forms and shapes, conjuring bits and pieces of her paintings, Clare Goodwin seems to render her basic motives more palpable. The suitably titled Whispers appear to act like an additional psychological layer as they are a reminiscence of an already existing memory. Sometimes, Goodwin playfully combines the elements into wall-based installations and creates ever-changing relationships between the ghosts and whispers from the past.