My sculpturing work is based on my training as a wood sculptress. In the course of three years of training and a subsequent two year working period in Sweden, I learnt to work correctly with materials, with wood as well as stone. The aim was to respect the limits of the material in order to create craft of good quality. In my artistic work I make visible the examination of the material, and the limits of the material. I find my space of working in the polarity of the possible and the not-possible, and experiment with failure. In my work, the material becomes an opposite, whose limits have to be found and re-shaped. In my work with concrete, bronze and wood, I create figures in precarious moments of balance. Reserved motions which demand intensive body tension are shown without losing their dynamic element. It seems possible they will lose their balance at any moment.
Between the tendency towards a harmonic form, there is a tension with the rough, fragmented shaping of the surface. Traces of work and blows remain like scars of a wound, and document the process cohesion of working. This intensifies the expression of fragility and vulnerability which possesses the figures.
A focal point of my sculptures is the female nude which is served either by a very small, intimate format or a monumental size. I develop figures which are oriented towards the usual ideal of beauty, yet which reflect autonomy and perfection in their contradictoriness. Another focal point of my work is animal bodies. Here too, of immense significance is the relationship of material and form, volume and balance, which is expressed in miniatures as well as large format.
Susanne Kraisser, May 2006
Silent Aesthetics – The sculptress, Susanne Kraisser
Exhibition at the ‘Neue Galerie des Kunstvereins Erlangen’, April 2005
(New Gallery of the Erlangen Art Association)
by Barbara Leicht M.A., Curator of Erlangen Art Museum
It is not complete coincidence that Susanne Kraisser, born in Rosenheim in 1977, is involved with figurative forms. She experienced intensive contact with wood from early childhood in her father’s joiner’s workshop. Her father continued his training, and became a wood sculptor. Just as she also later attended a School for Wood Sculpturing, to learn the basics of her trade. Wood is the first material Susanne Kraisser came into contact with, and one which she continues to work today. Other materials followed: concrete and bronze, which, with their additive working process, are quite different in terms of a sculpturing process from the subtractive process applied when working wood. The artist has not yet focussed entirely on any of these three materials, all play a significant role in her work. It is, however, perhaps concrete which draws particular attention because it enables the artist to work in larger dimensions. Yet only the resistance and resolute nature of hard wood restrains the impatience of Kraisser.
At present she is attending sculpturing classes with Prof. Höpfner at the Nuremberg Academy for Forming Arts, but will soon end her studies. This exhibition is her debut as a freelance artist. She deliberately does not seek a role model in art history, or within the contemporary art scene. She deliberately distances herself from the optically adapted, from that which ha already been, and intensively perceived, without wishing to deny its existence. She does not imitate. She deliberately does not subject herself to any trend, but, in accordance with classic, academic rules, generates her own creation from her own thoughts and feelings. The sensuality in the writing of the American author and revolutionary, Henry David Thoreau, is very close to the sensuality and way of thinking of Susanne Kraisser. Thoreau’s cosmos is determined by the individual’s perception of nature, and his existential bond with nature. Can such also be found in the figures of the sculptress? In one figure which was created not only of her own will, one can find far more than merely a material core. By idealizing, Kraisser distances her work from the environment and from the observer, and by means of stylization of the female figure, sensuality is transported into its appearance.
The artist always shows the figure of the woman, never of the man. This is simply due to her interest in the female body, and her own existence as a woman. The body of a man does not aesthetically arouse and inspire her. (sic!).
Kraisser also works on motifs of creatures living in the wild, including wolf, raven, wild boar. All of her representational figures close to nature display their appearance gently, they are weighted but not rigid. Without a counterpoise (this is only to be found in two figures in the exhibition), which in classical sculpturing defines the ponderable element of the sculpture, Susanne Kraisser balances the objects, which are mostly motionless or in restrained motion, by means of verticals and horizontals, which generate tension and static equilibrium. This method allows even the dancer balancing on one tiptoe to express harmony. And the fairy standing at the edge of a block is casually held in her tension by means of her conspicuous verticality. Yet she still displays a ‘hurt’ surface, aesthetically at times in contradiction to a sensuality which we normally associate with a harmonious tendency. The artist clearly documents the process cohesion of her work and its plastic development, for she feels that not everything has to be conclusively completed. Her motivation is to idealize, not to perfect. The eye of the observer is not bored, but believes it can see behind the visual cover of the object.
Kraisser also distances herself from the usual present-day idol of beauty of a perfect body. Only the most required details are declined, and the figure is thus transported away from strict naturalism which would allow us to come too close. The observer clearly senses the original form of the block from which a sculpture has been worked, and to which the sculpture is subordinate. And in the case of some sculptures, they portray their own solidity, – I am here referring to folded arms or arms hanging close to the body, or a chewing posture, among others – an unwillingness to completely open themselves to the observer. Susanne Kraisser mostly works without torsions, which can effect a clear side of viewing of her works. In this way, her works protect themselves from too intimate contact to the observer. The artist does not use a medium-sized format; only a very small, preciously dreamlike format and large format are used in her works. Drawings and small etchings stand autonomously next to the work of sculpture, and are not to be seen as articles of prior study. These also show sensual femininity in a small, almost intimate format. Prior studies to the real works are created in the form of spontaneous Bozzetti, sculpturing sketches, in wax and clay. – Silent Aesthetics – the title of the exhibition and at the same time a great challenge to the artist herself. I feel she has met this challenge with her resigned, yet persistent objects. A sculptress with a solid training, immense potential and a clear line of thought expresses the wish to reach her objective by means of continuous work.
│
│
│
│
│
│
│