15. April 2019 In By Kerstin Abraham Le projet Facing the Sky ne doit son éclosion qu´á légalement personnel de
ses organisateurs:
Trois écoles dort européennes: Muthesius Kunsthochschule, Kiel (Allemagne), I´Ècolesupérieure dort et de design TALM-Le Mans et lÉcole nationale supérieure dort et de design de Nancy et leurs directeurs; Deux enseignants et un assistant dévoués: Kerstin Abraham, Clémence van Lunen et Olivier Chouteau; Douze étudiants; une fabrique labellisée EPV pour un workshop mémorable: la briqueterie Rairies-Montrieux; Le Département du Morbihan et légalement de toute lé´quipe du Domaine de Kerguéhennec.
»Facing The Sky recounts the story of an ambitious educational project aiming at placing students in a real production and exhibition context.
At the heart of this ceramics workshop which ran all through the first semester 2017-18 was the desire to make students of both sides of the Rhine, reflect on monumental sculpture in situ. The project carefully retraced all stages of construction from the design of models in schools, the first visit on site, the appropriation of an unfamiliar material, (the soft honeycombed brick), the learning process of new ways of production (industrial operations and wood burning oven) up to the final installation of the work in the park. For the students, especially from those from Nancy, the whole process was totally new.
Approaching matter in its mass and textually quality, having at ones disposal fabulous quantities of earth, the possibility of getting to know an industrial site of extraction and processing (Rairies Montrieux) , of meeting expert technicians, of working in a team with a spirit of mutual aid, pluriculturalism… everything seemed new. For the whole duration of the workshop, the ten students selected became the pioneers of a new world, the »muddy brothers« working together on anchored sculptures defining the sky.
The immersion in earth and raw bricks was sudden and total. Young and brimming with energy, the students where thrown in at the deep end. Without any particular knowledge of the fundamentals of sculpture, the had to adapt from the outset to a formal constraint (to create from five kinds of bricks) to design large volumes and start there own reflection on the surrounding environment.
According to Clemence van Lunen »nothing beats experiment in the fields«. They had to learn to accept the rules of a selection made by demanding professionals, to adapt the unexpected while being able to bounce back, to be receptive to the savior-faire of technicals they depend on and respect it, and not to refrain from giving a rough time to a given form for maximum expressiveness.
The final worksrevealvery diverse lines of investigation. The students understand quickly that the guidelines are as follows: start from ape defined and functional form and then create a diversion to reach another for decidedly more artistic but wich would have the capacity to add a construction and aesthetic value to the brick module.
Doro Brübach’s extremly precise and infinitely adjustable arrangements are part ofup-cycling trend, especial popular in the countries of Northern Europe. The result from an exclusive attention paid to waste and their recovery. But they also relate to the physical presence of mountains of waste, very similar to slag heaps, which transform the topography of a site. Doro opts for a unique shape, a sort of stick, extremely minimalist and of one single color and about twenty centimeters long.
The two installations presented in the Kerguehennec Art Centre, one in the kitchen of the chateau, the other straddling two spaces of the kennel, where developed from this first collection of rejects and waste. Multiple editions of these works have been made since. (…)
Echoing the concerns of her teacher, Kerstin Abraham,Annette Herbers questions the culture symbolized the brick. She Stocks hollow bricks in a form of a staircase climbing the up-hill slope, at the heart of which she positions fragments, plates, so as to define a codified term the
fundamentals of a new alphabet. (…)
Kertin Abraham, an eminent German artist, was present the rairiesalongside her students.(…) She has decided to use as many types of bricks as she could, which in the state of baked fragments, display their internal structure, made of voids and links remaining to be invented. She gathers them in a compost aedicule, endowed with an extraordinary variety of shapes and colures.
Brick, in the same way as the earthenware plate more ofen present in her work, is a cultural element, taken from everyday live, which everybody can recognize and which is evocative fore everyone, whatever the bricks state of dislocation. Kerstin choose to set up her workin the vicinity of the lake, (…)«
Stephanie Le Folie-Hadida
