A chocolate bar. Intended for a pleasurable consumption. Always the same. Lying there.
This industrial, serial produced form is the origin of the work Zustände (Conditions).
A hot summer day. A long journey by car. A forgotten chocolate bar behind the windshield.
Varinka Schreurs put the chocolate bars in the sound to let them melt before she squashed them in her hands and therefore provided them with individuality.
This particular condition is being digitalized with a 3D-scanner and then 3D printed.
Afterwards their surfaces are white and shiny. Steady and solid is their new form. Enrolled the traces of that moment.
Tender and fragil are they standing there; next to their ancestors made out of earthenware: cups. In their materiality evoking textiles, troublesome handcraft. Instead they are made out of a plastic string with the aid of 3-D printing technique. Downloaded from: thingiverse.com – the world’s largest 3-D printing community. As a finger exercise, a test pressure object, as a symptom of a culture.
A sparkling fountain busting out of a just opened bottle of champaign. A special moment. A moment of joy, of celebration, of bubbling over, of exuberance, exhilaration, inebriation, flush, ecstasy.
Origin of the work Fountain was the wish to retain such moment or in a continual repetition extend it ad infinitum.
Material and form of the Fountain stand in opposite to the associated decadence of the champaign: MDF, a quadratic cube of glass, a pump of stainless steel. One can see the technical mode of formation of the fountain. Thereby it refers to the wishes inherent inconvertibility – as the soft splashing sound and the sparkling smell of the champaign spread out in the room.
On the road. Alone. At night. The nocturnal black space remains indefinite. Unable to estimate distance. Time passes slowly through this monotony of images and sounds. The similarity of every parking lot is an experience of spacelessness. Unidentified waiting. A journey. A feeling. No visable goal.
Silvery, shiny pipes occupy the space while adding an element of absurdity. It becomes almost indiscernible what the artist added to the space and what was already there. Pipes that emerge and recede out of the walls, ceiling, and floor expand the space into layers of in-between, behind and a before. Mounds of soil are found under cracks and fissures. The work creates a demanding environment for the inquiring spectator: Where is one situated? Above or underground? What functions do the pipes serve? How did the insects get into the neon lamps? What time is this?
In »what happened will be next?« the spectator is equipped with a movie camera and headphones. While walking a delineated circuit through the buildings of the ESAD school, they simultaneously view a video of the same route on the camera screen.The ‘duplicating’ of the reality creates a feeling of uncertainty. What happens when reality seems to be in the state of simulation? What is real? I developed this work during my stay at the ESAD in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. The work also deals with how we process orientation, both in general terms and in regards to being in a foreign culture.
The work »Aschino kommt« was inspired by an old village story about a donkey called Aschino. Once known to the whole village, the adventures of this donkey are now largely forgotten, remembered only by the older generation. The posters that were put up all over the village bore the legend: „Aschino kommt“ („Aschino is coming“) – with no explanation of who or what Aschino was. Each oft he hand-drawn posters showed part of a donkey, which changed from day to day. Abstract forms gradually became less abstract, as blots and lines became ears, a donkey outline and legs. Inquisitive poster readers could ring the phone number below and hear stories about the donkey – narrated by a lady old enough to remember. The finishing touch was the large poster on the wall of a house at the main street of Heinde. It showed a hand-drawn copy of an old, enlarged newspaper photograph of Aschino in his entirety. Aschino had arrived! The work took a look at communication structures within a village while reviving a story that was once part of a community’s identity. The old story came to life again.
(i want to settle down myself. i’m enmeshing myself in the space; i’m weaving a net, thin white lines against the massiveness of the space. i need to find a way to mount the ropes, to reach the ceiling. my entire bodily power against the ferro concrete.) The spectators can walk around and inside the installation. The different perspectives enable a variety of diverse impressions.
*1984 in Vechta
Since 2011 Studies in Media Arts, HGB Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, Intermedia Class of Prof. Alba D`Urbano
2004-2011 Kulturwissenschaften und Ästhetische Praxis (Cultural Sciences and Fine Arts), Universität Hildesheim (Diploma)
2007-2008 Studies in Visual Art and Performance Art at Escola Superior de Artes e Design, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal
2009 re:do! sculpture as (inter)action, Hildesheim
2008 First. International Student Meeting for Animation Arts, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal
2007 LandArbeit 07. Kunstprojekt für einen Ort (Local Art Project), Heinde
2006 Kollektivkörper, Ledebur Kaserne Hildesheim
2005 umräumen. Künstlerisches Handeln im öffentlichen Raum, Kunstverein Hildesheim