Paper boundaries · Afra Dopfer in the Foe156
Text for the exhibition "Internal", Exhibition forum FOE 156, 1998 by Anne Erfle
The special situation of the FOE in the permanent provisional on the outskirts of the city challenges the artists exhibiting there to conceive works that refer to the location and its historical development. The now dilapidated barracks served as an air force hospital from 1939, were later used as a hospital in Oberföhringen and in their current state, surrounded by prosperity, represent a manifest symbol of transience A new aesthetic was given to spatial sculpture.
The artist works with interventions in space that look like architecture, but appear absurd in their function. In earlier works, for example in the Akademie Galerie, she used semitransparent nettle to occupy the space with space-filling tension. The fabric was fixed at the corner points of the room, giving it a sculptural form with apparent stability thanks to the fragile material. It entered into a symbiotic connection with the room and made it inaccessible at the same time.
In the exhibition forum of the FOE 156, however, Dopfer created a construction specially designed for this situation, which, in contrast to the other works, is an independent sculpture. It could be set up in a different location, but then it would not be closely related to the architecture. The exhibition area consists of two crossing corridors and an atrium. Normally one does not perceive the intersection of the corridors as a special space, but Dopfer materializes the idea of the penetration of two spatial volumes by marking them barely noticeably and thus defining the virtual spatial conception. With the help of a wooden scaffolding, she traces the corner points of the found architecture and covers the scaffolding from the inside with paper webs. The result is an exact copy of this part of the room - minimally reduced: a cube whose four sides are open and lead into the corridors with "wall attachments". Ceiling and floor as flawless white surfaces give the light spatial structure an imaginary stability. The sculpture, produced with the highest precision, is fitted into the building like an inner skin. This happens step by step on site according to a mathematically well-constructed, logostic concept. Since the sculptural body is extremely sensitive, the construction procedure becomes a crucial part of the work. By choosing smooth but fragile materials, Dopfer also refers to other aspects of this particular situation and makes them an issue. A crossing point is a place where two paths meet. So it always represents a decision-making situation. From here you can go in different directions. But it is precisely this property that the artist prevents by emphasizing it, but making it impassable. If you were to enter the sculpture, it would be destroyed.
Afra Dopfer sees herself as a sculptor in the classical sense. Her sculptures are each designed for a specific architecture and only work in this context.
The artist visualizes the boundaries of space and thus underlines the sculptural aspect of architecture. Her works take up formal spatial structures, but at the same time, through their transparency and fragility, include the outside that exists beyond the visible borders. They change the usual room functions, force you to pause or, as in the FOE, to take other paths. The intersection itself becomes a metaphor. In this fragile ambience, its new aesthetic looks like a precious meditation room. It forms a center that one can only mentally occupy. In the same way, only the “exits” are to be viewed as approaches, as possible directions. You only see the opening, not the destination. After removing the temporarily installed sculpture, the perception of the room has changed. The viewer has consciously experienced it through the doubling and simultaneous limitation and has taken in its dimensions with all of the senses.
Birgit Höppl to video work "what to do?" in the exhibition "Tangible" Künstlerhaus Marktoberdorf, 2007
“Although no one or a whole body can be seen here, the hand postulates a life of its own and transmits a variety of sensations that are directly transferred to the viewer. Curiosity, fear, rebellion, exhaustion, calm. The slight but powerful intervention of the optical separation of hand and the corresponding body gives the extremity a new dimension of its own, monumentalizes it, fills it with personality.
This video work, which gets by with minimal means - a box and a hand, filmed by a camera - exemplifies Afra Dopfer's artistic interest. She sees herself as a sculptor in the classic sense, who always deals with the relationship between space and body. Often intervening precisely on the contact line with architecture, the sculptor explains in her concentrated projects how even small changes in the respective system influence the perception of the entire space. "
Karolina Breindl to work "Ellipsoid" in the exhibition "Texere" 1998, Seidl - Villa Munich
The artist Afra Dopfer does not, as usual, use rooms as exhibition rooms in which pictures are hung or objects are placed. The specific space that is found becomes, in its peculiarity, the starting point for your artistic considerations and, as a result, the place of discussion about art. She takes the empty space as a given spatial body and inserts another sculptural spatial body into it. This inner body refers to the space surrounding it as it records its dimensions and shape. Because the spatial relationships come into play in the different sculptural structures, they also always reflect the architectural space to the full extent without appearing heavy or even massive.
Afra Dopfer gives the emptiness of the space a shape that is tied back to its spatial conditions. The lighting conditions are also important. She encloses the volume of the sculpture with elastic and transparent material such as tulle and veiled nettle. She also increasingly uses paper, a slightly vulnerable material that underlines the fleeting character of the works. The huge lengths of fabric are sewn together and stretched into a three-dimensional shape with the help of nylon cords on the walls. The resulting figures are shapes, the interior of which can in turn be grasped by the translucent structure of the fabric. This "hollow" core is not accessible, but can be seen through the transparency of the material. On the one hand it appears as a space-filling body, on the other hand it is at the same time a cavity that repeats the emptiness of the space.
When experiencing space, it is no longer possible to clearly distinguish between sculpture and space. Afra Dopfer's conception of space is no longer determined by the concept of separation but that of connection. Because the architectural space and the inscribed spatial body are directly related, they only exist once in this constellation. At the end of the exhibition, the connection is broken, the sculpture collapses, and the room is empty again. Her works are temporary installations that cannot be relocated to other locations. Only the principle of the room-in-room concept can be used again.
Matthias Supé to work "A coming and going"
Depending on the perspective of the viewer, this sculptural work establishes completely different relationships with the surrounding space. If you take a closer look at a single segment of a sphere, you will find the entire entrance hall of the day care center mirrored on its shiny surface. If, on the other hand, you step back as far as possible, a large structure of continuous geometric shapes unfolds in the interplay of all these colorful individual parts. Only while looking at them do they come together and unite to form squares, diamonds and parallelograms, which only gain their shape from the differently colored spheres and their different distances. With minimalist and extremely precise means, Afra Dopfer creates order in this sculpture. A strict order that is not "tidy", but rather "structured", and therefore not boring, but meaningful. Because it visually draws the wall surface, which can never be fully perceived due to the staircase, gallery and elevator shaft, together. As with patterned wallpaper, it is the spheres that make the wall appear as a harmonious whole.
It is the relationships between structures and spaces and their mutual effects on one another that Afra Dopfer likes to pursue in her work. In this case she transferred the horizontal (hall), vertical (elevator) and diagonal (staircase) directions of movement of the day care center children to the arrangement of the spheres. They make contacts, come together in small groups and then part again. Just like the students in the day care center - with a constant “coming and going”.
Heinz Schütz to work "Green, green, red / red, red, green"
In the white and gray play hall of the day-care center, Afra Dopfer's ornamental fields set color accents, at the same time they open up a visual scope that invites the children to participate. In the starting position, the elements of the changeable ornament function optically like lines of a picture in their serially repeating sequence of green, green, red on the ground floor and red, red, green on the upper floor. In fact, they are short, colored wooden sticks that can be rotated around their own axis. Each rotation changes the picture and creates a different constellation, whereby the number of possible variations and changes is inexhaustible.
The initial ornament chosen by Afra Dopfer is strictly geometrical and clearly constructed and yet can be read optically multiple times: the eye can follow the horizontal, vertical and diagonal colored lines. However, the image can also be viewed as a two-dimensional sum of triangles with circular corner points, as an addition of rhombuses or - the reading that is probably the first thing that catches the eye - as a juxtaposition of hexagons. A spatial way of viewing the perspective transforms the hexagons into cubes.
From the rotating colored sticks, which resemble a set of building blocks, the children are invited to intervene in the picture and redesign it in a playful way. Since the reach of the children's arms is limited and the upper rows of the original ornament are beyond their reach, the children's radius of action is visualized: The strict geometrical order is retained in the upper part, in the area in which the children act may arise Chaos, a new order or, with the upper part as a model, the starting ornament again.
Works talk: Karolina Sarbia and Afra Dopfer. In : Afra Dopfer, three-dimensional
Work talk Kat 1 Karolina Sarbia and Afra Dopfer
Work talk II
The perception is a spatial event
KS 1
There is already a conversation about your artistic work in the three-dimensional catalog of works. There we talked about selected works that were created after 1998. The Raumkörper-works, for which you have received multiple awards and have also become known as an artist, were all created before 1998. In this work discussion we span a wide range from the artistic beginnings to the current works with the intention of developing and aesthetic principles in yours Make work clear.
Let's start with the nude drawings. There is a huge bundle of drawings that you have never shown in public before, although there is a lot of ground in them, which you referred to later. In addition to the circumstances of this time, can you also describe your artistic concern to us? I remember a preliminary talk in which you said that it is less about human bodies than about architectural figures.
AD 1
The designation of my nude figures as architectural figures comes from Leo Kornbrust, in whose sculpture class I was accepted at the time. When we first met I showed him my nudes and he said: "That's architecture, what you are doing ...".
Only later did I realize my closeness to architecture, and even later, i.e. now, I see that from the beginning of my studies, in dealing with the human body, I also asked myself questions about architecture. I didn't have an “artistic concern” as you call it at the time. I was pretty clueless. I saw drawing, which I did very intensively, as a study and as an investigation, and did not give the results any autonomous existence. That means I didn't rate it as art.
KS 2
Then I just ask in more detail to understand what you have examined on the human body. Because I remember you saying you kept drawing until the drawing was 'right'. And at your discretion that was the case when the figure was no longer a fragment, when the externally visible body shape matched the inner invisible shape, the skeleton. Or how was that?
AD 2
The sessions with the models lasted 45 minutes and that was how long I drew. But I could have drawn in the same position for a whole day or several days, because drawing was a very slow process for me. Only when an imaginary framework was in place did I go into the forms, from the large to the smaller, subordinate forms.
I was most interested in the standing figure. You have to consider that the models had to stand for a long time. So they chose a stable posture, didn't pose.
I asked myself how the body holds itself upright, which internal rotations, which arrangement of body parts, which statics are the basis for this, so that the individual parts functioned as a whole. So it was about constructive questions. I tried to use the external shape of the body, its bulges, curves, shapes - because there is no other indication - to infer the internal statics, and vice versa, to learn from this how the internal statics influences the external form .
My understanding of statics had nothing to do with the structure of the human skeleton, and anatomical studies brought me there no additional knowledge. For me, the internal structure consisted rather in the interaction of forces. The nice thing about the human body is that it can be broken down into components by drawing, but it is always a functioning whole and can only be experienced as a whole.
KS 3
I understand you were interested in the human body as a living, coherent form. You did not only see the body as an abstract form, but rather as a self-contained system. You never considered the space around the body. On the contrary, it looks as if you are cutting the figure out of the empty space with the pen like you would with a knife.
In addition, you have grasped the shape of the body from its surface. 'Seeing', you once said in this context, 'is like a precipitate on a surface, and the surface is scanned by the eye.' With this conception of perception, you went to the installation work later. I am thinking in particular of the work on the academy with the transparent triangular window in the open air. How is the surface related to perception?
AD 3
My idea of the process of seeing as a "precipitate" developed while drawing and modeling. First there was the question: How does this or that form come about? And then the constant “visual scanning” of the forms gave rise to the need to penetrate even more into them. But if I opened the body in my imagination, I imagined, I would again only see surfaces of what lies underneath: everything material has a surface.
And when you stand in a room and look out of the window, the window opens the surface of the interior and lets the view go on to ... yes, to where? It suddenly fascinated me that you can see for miles, that the view can have such a wide radius. So in the continuation I was concerned with the look, especially the look out of the window. In this train of thought, however, a new aspect was added, namely the question of the boundary between inside and outside: does my I end at the limits of my body or only where my gaze ends?
So after two years of drawing, my interest had shifted from the figure, the object, to the act of perception itself. Before that, my gaze only met surfaces, suddenly it widened infinitely. However, I was no longer able to work on these topics through nude studies. To do this, I had to find new forms of expression and that was the start of developing my own artistic work.
KS 4
When you look out the window, you are addressing the work 'Blickfeld' (Fig.Xx) from 1992. There you built a three-sided prism, which was covered with transparent fabric, in a window reveal, and for the first time made the act of perception a theme. Can you go into this work in more detail?
AD 4
The view from the almost five meter high window of our classroom in the art academy leads to the park at the rear. A wonderful view. When looking out at the tree tops of the park, I was bothered by the fact that the separation between inside and outside was defined by a window pane, i.e. by an area. In my mind this transition from inside to outside had to be a three-dimensional one. That's why I wanted to create an in-between space in which the gaze can wander around both inside and outside and focus on targets of different close proximity.
I used a material that I knew from my time at the theater. Depending on the incidence of light, it is very transparent or not at all. In side light the eye got caught in the interior of the form, the light came from the front, the view went out into the park.
In Jan van Eyck's painting, a window is often reflected in the figure's eye in order to create an analogy between the human eye and the window. The eye is the opening to the body and I keep imagining this act as the light falls through the lens into the eye and there creates the image of the outside world.
KS 5
The fact that perception as a spatial event will become the central theme in the artistic work began with this work 'Blickfeld'. The direct connection between figure and space, between inside and outside, continues to play a decisive role. You made this interaction visible in a special way in the spatial body installations.
AD 5
With the sewn bodies made of fabric, I wanted to give the volume of space a tangible and understandable form. But it was also about the act of perception and: about statics. Because the material bodies were brought into the correct shape by even tension.
KS 6
Usually, when you think of volume, you think of mass. Your spatial bodies, on the other hand, are large, but have hardly any weight, are not characterized by mass, although they suggest a full volume, look heavy, but are light. In the spatial body works you deal with the 'idea of space as sculpture'. You start from the concrete exhibition space and its basic spatial coordinates and develop from it a sculpture that refers to it through its size and shape. I am thinking of one of the first works Lichtfilter in Lothringerstraße in Munich from 1996, where two cuboids made of fabric protrude from two wall windows into the room.
AD 6
It is precisely this work that I would not include in the series of spatial bodies, because it does not deal with the entire room, but only one detail of the room. At the exhibition site, a former machine factory, partitions had been removed. As a result, windows and parts of the room lost their original purpose and this was the reason for the strange position of the two window openings. Initially, it was only about the two adjacent, almost square window surfaces that I wanted to project into the room. The title came about when I noticed that the light entering through the windows was also taking on a shape.
KS 7
That's right, the two spatial bodies in Lothringerstraße were in a section of the exhibition hall. But they were set very precisely and bound to the space. You further increased the interaction between work and place in the work 'Raumkörper' from 1996 in the academy gallery and the 'Ellipsoisd' in the Seidlvilla 1997. There you took the architecture of the exhibition space and developed a spatial sculpture directly dependent on it.
In both works you take the given exhibition space as an empty spatial body, measure it precisely in order to form a sculptural structure that is incorporated into the space. It is like a room within a room and at the same time you give shape to the emptiness of the room. While the spatial structure in the academy gallery appears voluminous and space-filling, it appears airy and light in the tower room of the Seidlvilla. With these works you understood the space as a plastic, malleable material. What were your ideas about it?
AD 9
The academy gallery is on the mezzanine floor of a subway station. It is an area separated from the public space by glass and completely closed, which can be fully seen like a shop window. This situation, but also the shape of the room, interested me. There was a bevel and two supports that created two cavities in the fabric mold. First I made a scaled-down pattern of the shape, sewed the individual pieces of fabric together and braced them on site. The volume was created through the even tension of the fabric all around.
The room in the Seidlvilla has a completely different mood and purpose. It's bright and high up in the tower. Here, too, I was interested in the floor plan: an ellipse, not a circle as one might think of a tower room. The decision to leave the material body open at the top and bottom resulted from the consideration of how I could create the cylindrical shape through tension. I drew vertical aluminum profiles into the fabric at regular intervals, similar to slats in a sail, connected them with thin ropes to the upper and lower edges of the room, and stretched them until the shape began to "float" in the room. Mind you, each of these ropes had to have a different length, because this was the only way to precisely reduce the size of the room - a geometrical phenomenon that I only got to know "by doing" during this work. Often it was necessities of this kind that led to certain decisions. If a constructive solution was good and coherent, in the end I always liked its aesthetics and shape.
KS 10
What is interesting about the ellipsoid in the Seidlvilla is that the shape floating in space is open at the top and bottom. As a result, it is no longer a body with a clearly defined volume. The elliptical shape exists because space exists and vice versa. Both are inextricably linked and can only be thought of in connection with one another. In terms of perception, too, it is no longer possible to clearly distinguish between sculpture and space. This inner necessity and the ambivalences in perception create a unique presence of the spatial body works. How important is 'presence' in your work in general?
AD 10
The spatial bodies were created in a long process of approaching the location, and by drawing, building models and trying out materials. Only after it was set up did I see it for the first time 1: 1 in the corresponding location. I know very well the feeling of being overwhelmed by the presence of the work at this moment. The presence of a work is the “more”, that which cannot be imagined in advance, not to be confused with the “effect”, which is definitely planned for. Nevertheless, presence is not a coincidental by-product. If it were, every car on the road would have its presence. Presence is created through a compelling and logical relationship to the place. Through a constellation that can only be like this and not otherwise.
KS 11
As you say, the presence of your spatial body works has above all to do with its self-reference. It is about the compelling aesthetic experience of sculpture in the here and now in the specific place. The work cannot simply be transferred to another location, because it was created out of it. The location determines the work and, in its significance as a reference point for the sculpture, becomes the object of work and observation. The artistic works do not draw attention to parts or areas of the world outside of oneself, they are not representatives and do not refer to what is absent, on the contrary, they point to what is present. You do not divert your gaze from yourself to other things. They are what they are: sculptures that are sensually and physically present in space.
AD 11
If you are talking about the compelling aesthetic experience ... in the here and now in the specific place, it is also referring to the dance. And that's exactly how I approached this work back then ... I did modern dance for a long time and that shaped my perception of space. It's not just about the relationship between dancer and space, but about the experience of presence. It is the time in which I am present because I perceive. Presence means presence. The fact that my spatial body works were temporary, in my opinion, heightened this moment.
KS 12
This connection, which you describe between the dancer and the room, calls to me the association with the video 'What to do !?' in which a delicate hand from the back wall of a white box groping its way through an empty box space. In connection with the dance it looks as if the work formulates a model-like view of your understanding that body and space are inextricably linked and mutually dependent.
AD 12
In fact, with the work 'What to do !?' the concrete image of a body in space, of a human body in a space surrounding it, of dancer and stage space, but also of the contrast between the organic and the geometric form, and: of the human hand as a perfect sculpture. At first I was only concerned with formal qualities, the range of shape and movement possibilities of the hand: flat, voluminous, open, permeable or closed. In the course of the “shooting” I noticed that the hand positions always come across as feelings and moods. Impossible not to tell a story. I thought of the artistic process and Bruce Nauman's "studio exercises": the boredom and loitering in the studio. What to do? This is a question that I asked myself very often in the studio when I started to work process-based ... the answer came while working on the video: that the value lies in the doing and not necessarily in the result.
KS 13
In the installation 'stairs' you illuminate another facet in the relationship between figure and space. With a thin steel cable, you stretch a transparent length of fabric in the room in such a way that horizontal and vertical surfaces alternate, resulting in the shape of a staircase. Depending on which point of view you take at the door entrance, you can sometimes see the staircase-like structure, sometimes the lines that divide the room in height. If one imagines the rectangular room from the side, the stairs cut the room diagonally into two equivalent empty room parts. There is no longer an object. The artistic act consists of precisely cutting the space with strips of fabric. You have a large body of work that you call 'cuts-out'. Does this work have a conceptual connection with this group of works?
AD 13
It is interesting that you associate the cutouts with the stair installation. Because there is no connection in terms of time, topic or content. The cutouts arose from my interest in the spatial - perspective organization of photographs. You see cutting and dividing as a conceptual context - I have used this method many times, it is true. Processes are so important in art and I often wonder why they are so little discussed in art. The process includes my approach to something, my point of view, my attitude and my personal experience, so ... much more than just the mechanical aspect of handling the material. Jackson Pollock expanded painting by introducing a new method of applying color. This has to do with an experienced and felt knowledge in dealing with color. With the realization that color, treated as a material, unfolds its "material potential", namely flow.
In my installation I wanted to create the shape of a staircase from a single surface and a single line, just by the tension of the rope. The property of a staircase is that it looks the same from above and below. Without gravity, we could walk on its underside. This property created the mirror-inverted division of the room, along the step shape that you perceived as a cut in the installation. Seen in this way, it is also a cut, or a thin dividing line, a skin.
KS 14
When you talk about skin, I think of one of your last spatial body works in the gallery FOE 156. It is also a site-specific work. In a crossing that was there due to two intersecting room lines, you built a square space body that was positioned in front of the actual wall. It was covered with thin paper so that it was absolutely smooth. Far more than fabric, this surface gave the impression of skin.
AD 14
With this work I discovered paper as a material. Realizing it was a great challenge that I was only able to master with the help of many people. The exhibition rooms of the FOE gallery are located in a former hospital, a makeshift building from the post-war period. I didn't want to use any fabric for my installation because I absolutely wanted to avoid any association with the building's earlier use as a hospital. The makeshift character of the wooden barracks gave me the idea of working with an ephemeral material, namely paper. In this specific context, the paper meant a further reduction in wall thickness, volume and durability, an "exaggeration" of the existing situation. The form arose from the situation. The term "crossing" is known from church construction. It is the place where the nave and transept intersect. In the church she claims a special power for herself. But it is actually not a strictly delimited space, but an open form. It is only formed in the imagination of the intersection of two intersecting volumes.
KS 15
With the 'crossing' you have finished the series of spatial body works. You were looking for new approaches because - as you once said - you no longer just wanted to work on one room, but on the room itself. This was accompanied by a time of experimentation that led to an expansion of your artistic working methods. I want to go back to the early 90s cutouts. At that time you cut out photographic motifs according to central, color or spatial perspectives and dissected them analytically. I am thinking in particular of the landscape photos, templates from newspapers, art-historical pictures by old masters. They were works on paper that had more of the character of studies.
AD 15
Editing removes something from the context - in the case of a picture, it is the contextual context that is changed. You can also glue something into the picture, which has a similar effect. I've tried a few things and have also gone into larger formats, such as in Lothringerstrasse, where I covered a piece of the facade with white paper. (Fig. XX) A dissolve or fade always focuses on something else - Christio also works with his packaging with this. But when asked whether I cut something out of a picture or whether I paste it over, I have to consider the statics of the paper, which changes a lot as a result. The material, i.e. the paper, may become very weak if I cut away too much. Since it's always about the material for me, it plays a role in the decision whether to glue or cut. I was more interested in cutting, the borderline between transition and dissolution.
KS 16
I am just wondering whether the flags that you hung out of the window in New York, rectangular strips of fabric with a cut-out oval in the middle (fig. Xx), belong in a certain way to the work of the Cutouts? Or the twisted sheets of plaster of paris (Fig.XX)?
AD 16
Yes, the flags in NY fit right in there. The paper cutting and the work with leaves were created during my stay in NYC. The movement of the sheet of paper, the change from flat to three-dimensional, that interested me. When I came to NYC on a scholarship in the summer of 2001, I was just amazed at the many flags on the walls of the city. At that time it was really frowned upon in Germany if you were walking around with a German flag - only the NPD did that. But then came September 11th. And after that it didn't just get more extreme with the flags. The whole handling of this terrible story was very alien to me: I wanted to mourn. And surrender to me. Do not continue straight away or even fight back. Probably a very "German" attitude. I then remembered the pictures of the reunification, when East German citizens had cut the hammer, circle and wreath of ears out of their flag and took it out on the street. Those were strong images. It was the cut that was on the one hand an injury and destroyed the flag as a symbol, but at the same time it was an opening that opened up a new view, i.e. conveyed hope. And I used this ambivalence of the cut for my two white "flags". There were two, so that a space could arise in between and you could watch them in their corresponding movements. It was sensual and beautiful work, and lucky for me that I got the opportunity to hang it up there.
KS 17
In the period after 2000 you turned away from fabric as a material and turned more to paper. Cut-outs of photographed interiors were created (Fig.xx e.g. Lothringer cut or Birkenau cut), smaller three-dimensional paper objects and flat works made of thin cardboard that you cut, dismantled and reassembled (Fig. XX e.g. white on gray, 2xA4, or in the Objects folder ‚black and white prototype '). From this, in turn, large walls made of black construction paper later developed in certain pattern sequences, such as in the Kunstverein Rosenheim, and large-format ceiling and floor works (Fig. Schwanthaler XX). The breaking down of geometric shapes into patterns has something strict on the one hand and something ornamental at the same time. How do the works on paper relate to the desire to find out about new methods of spatial processing?
AD 17
I still liked paper. As a material, however, it is not very durable and sensitive, and it always looks sketchy. As I had done before in the picture collage, I spontaneously covered a room with A4 paper. On the one hand, I wanted to hide surfaces, and write a new unit of measurement into the room, to measure the room. When I took a photo of the situation, however, I saw that the translation into two-dimensional, of all things, reinforced the impression of spatiality. That was new to me, I found it interesting, and so I continued to work with the sheet formats. The decisive step, however, was to use the sheet as a module. I had found the solution to repeat, vary and change work and still be able to work with and in rooms as installations. The unique and exclusive "matching" of space and sculpture was over.
KS 18
That's true, but you've developed a number of ways to redefine space. And with the series paperwork you have found a way to give the medium of photography an autonomous status. Photography has accompanied you throughout your artistic work. You took so-called reference photos of everyday situations that came close to your artistic conception of sculpture. But you never saw them as independent artistic works; you saw them more as a source of inspiration and a stock of material, and that's why you rarely showed them in public. But photography plays an important role in your artistic work.
AD 18
In the search for my topics and my means of expression, I have often discovered situations in everyday life that perfectly represent the facts I am dealing with. For example, I found my idea of seeing as a “precipitate” in a motif that I saw on a trip to the Czech Republic. It was a manhole on the side of the road with a white shoulder sprayed over it. The white spray remained partly on the surface and partly fell into the openings (Fig. Xx). That was so to the point, that excited me. At first the photos were sketches and working material for me. Sometimes I also tried to recreate the situations - but it wasn't. Because details cannot be extracted or translated back from two to three-dimensional. So you remained, until today, somewhat undefined in the context of my work.
So there are the documentary photos of the spatial body works, the paperwork series, which is purely a photographic work, and the reference photos. In the case of the latter, however, I would not speak of photography. I would call them objets trouvés.
KS 19
I find the term 'objet trouvé' for photos that show a passing moment as well as a certain selective view of everyday life interesting because one usually associates real three-dimensional objects with the art-historical term. You photograph objects in everyday situations and structures such as containers, boxes, receptacles, construction sites, scaffolding, warehouses, places where wood is stacked, paper is cut, stones are piled up, house facades with doors and windows, streets and markings. You photograph the objects in their uniqueness as a sculptural form or thematize them in relation to the surrounding space and the architecture. Perhaps the reference photos could be better described as 'situation trouvé'?
AD 19
My photos show the coincidental coincidence of various everyday conditions that exist there unseen. It is my job to recognize this and to place it in, more precisely, in my artistic context. As I already mentioned, the individual objects often cannot be detached from this context. Since the word "situation" has not only a spatial, but also a temporal dimension, I find the term "situation trouvé" very appropriate. But I also like the term environment, because it's always about the context.
In the course of our conversation, however, it becomes increasingly clear to me what connects the reference photos with one another. They all ask the same question: how is a shape created? This question has preoccupied me since my nude studies at the beginning of my studies. How does a shape come about? Sometimes it arises from the coming together of different conditions. Hence the question: why is it important to me? And this value, these issues depend on my decision. They are practically in the "eye of the beholder".
If you think of the factual photographs of the cups or a Thomas Struth, then you understand that the artistic act begins with looking at things and that the next step is to turn this look into a work through an artistic process. Perhaps I have not yet found a special way of dealing with these photographs. The very process that would make it an artistic complex of works. Or another form of processing, as Gerhard Richter did with his “Atlas” *. As long as that doesn't happen, they remain my work material, fund, mind game and a homage to the poetry of everyday life. But that's fine. It doesn't all have to become art.
A Conversation between Karolina Sarbia (KS) and Afra Dopfer (AD)
KS: Time and again, for almost two years, we’ve met at your studio in order to talk about your works and to arrange them in a visually perceptible way for the current catalogue. This visual order for the catalogue reflects the fact, that in recent years various groups of works have been created simultaneously, which are more or less closely linked to each other. In 1998 there was a discernable caesura in your work, as you stopped creating the “Raumkörper”. In the catalogue, the last work of this kind is presented, which you designed specifically for the space in the artist’s gallery FOE 156 in Munich. What lead you to this radical break? What came before and what came next?
AD: In the work you are talking here, Vierung /Intersection (p. 8, 9; p. 11, 12; p. 15), I had thought, that I’d brought my idea of space as sculpture to its conclusion. But after that, there was a phase, which can best be described as a standstill. I was always dissatisfied with the results of my work. It was impossible to further develop the theme of a “room in a room,” in its previous form, as it were. So, I decided to try something new, something that was entirely new to me. I began drawing again: I made geometric, schematic stencil drawings without any motif, and without having any specific goal in mind. It was an entirely non-specific approach. It was in this time when I realized, that I needed to change my way of working in order to progress.
KS: This turning point, or caesura, was a departure from previous concepts combined with a reorientation. You had reached an artistic limit, in a sense, a “point of no return”. When I think of your “room within a room” installations, which were always designed specifically for each exhibition space, both the conception as well as the working method were precisely aligned to the space. The installations were maintained only for the short duration of the exhibition, though what did remain were the photographs as documents of the site-specific work. What was the main reason for this desire to change your working methods? Did it have more to do with the spaces provided, or rather more to do with the concept, that is to develop a temporary artwork for only one specific place? What reasons drove you to this drastic change?
AD: In the “room within a room” installations, I had only concentrated on a single project that I created throughout the course of a long and stringent process. I had tried to implement a precise and exact idea, by drawings, plans, models, and material tests. If this is successful, if the work is completed, when the idea has “materialized” before your eyes—this is a fantastic feeling! Eventually, it bothered me that I was unable to integrate many other aspects that I encountered in this method of working, Not to mention that after this arduous process, which often took more than a year, all that remained was a photograph. So, I wanted to simultaneously pursue more than one thing in parallel, or “multitrack”, to accommodate my various interests.
KS: What exactly do you mean, when you speak of “simultaneously pursue more than one thing in parallel”, or “multitrack”? Do you mean that you wanted to develop your works that were independent from a space, because the orientation towards one space was too “single-track”? You’ve experimented a good two years, though you’ve exhibited none of these works. What have you missed in the work and what did you want to include and integrate?
AD: I wanted to work on the room itself, not just the one room any more. But how should I implement it? At first it was just a thought. Today I can say that, at that time, I “only” decided on a procedural change, but that was also the most difficult thing to do: I had to change my way of working.
Above all, I had to first remove from my mind, what my art work should look like. I decided to do basically anything, to do something that was unknown to me. I also decided to do only things that were simple for me, and at first not to judge the outcome. I jumped from one medium to another, from drawing to string, from string to space, from space to photograph, et cetera. It was only after a while that I could see what it was about. It had to do with multifaceted relationships between body, space, surface, and line; but still within the fundamental sculptural issues.
KS: It is quite apparent, as you have realized a large repertoire of works after 2005, which are created utilizing various genre and medium. In my view, there is a small work that represents your desire to work on the “space per se,” simple, yet distinct: a black-painted egg, in which the window frame of a room is reflected on its surface. (p. 20). Here the space is manifested as a reflection on the surface of the egg, in a compact form, so to speak. The sphere or the circular shape is an important form that you are using frequently from that time. In an interview you once mentioned that the sphere is equivalent to the closed space of the previous “Raumkörper”-installations. You use it less because of its symbolism, rather more because of the form. What do you mean exactly?
AD: The sphere is a complete form; it is a closed system. In my earlier work with the sphere and the spherical form, I had dismantled this coherence. I divided, doubled, and suspended its form, as I observed how their properties and their spatial reference would change. While the sphere rolls across the floor, the ball segment can only move up and down, like a seesaw . . . this is a very different spatial behavior in comparison to rolling through a room. (p. 18). The works, such as Ball (title) and Sphere/ Infinity (p. 74) dealt with the spherical surface - drawings on the surface of a plaster sphere, which in comparison to a drawing on paper, have no limit. After that, the spheres became a module - a universal element, depending on the arrangement, it would either become a line or chaotic pile of spheres. (p. 73). In working on spheres, I’ve learned that both, in their form and in their behavior, there is always inherent relationship between spheres and their surroundings. This was an important discovery, and I think that it is the reason why I still work with the sphere.
KS: Let’s look at these differences in handling the sphere more closely. In all these works you use the form of a sphere both as an opportunity and as a starting point for the sculptural process, which in its manifestation appear to vary considerably. With the working methods described above, it seems that you could repeatedly strive for new spatial aspects, using the sphere. Doesn’t the large mural located in the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy in Grosshadern, where you work with the form of a sphere impression, belongs to this complex? Or in the video work of a hand, throwing up and catching a red ball repeatedly? The “airspace” that the ball measures, is perceivable as an empty room, by the act of throwing. What role does the negative or empty space play in your work in general?
AD: In my earlier work—specifically the “Raumkörper”—the space was even more important than the mass. It was about the experience of space. In dance one can describe and experience space through one’s own movement in it. In sculpture, space could be comprehended, for example, through the juxtaposition of the “positive” and “negative,” of mass and volume. When a “traditional sculptor” makes a mold from a clay model, we could see that the negative in the mold also has a volume, which is visible by the surface of the impression. In this respect, the work, “Impression of a Sphere”, as I have done in Grosshadern, is a good example of how I see the surface as a mediator between positive and negative. If we were in a room, most certainly we could see only surfaces. We could see the room because of its boundary, or because of an object inside. I want to show this relationship: that the perception of space and object belong together.
KS: This specific understanding of surface as a link between the positive and negative form is particularly apparent in the work that you realized for the FOE 156 gallery, of which we spoke at the outset (p. 12, 15). At the intersection of two traversing hallways you placed a cubic fits to the space’s actual dimensions. The construction was covered with smooth white paper, and at the center of the “Raumkörper”, an empty interior space, was visible from four sides, but was not accessible. The covered construction was installed like a “secondary skin,” set slightly from the actual wall.
AD: In this work, I went a step further: I didn’t necessarily contrast positive and negative, but rather enveloped a wooden structure with large paper surfaces by using skeleton construction like in a building. That is how the form was made. Since the form was very open, and the surface encompassing the space, quite thin, one could barely distinguish the interior space from the exterior body. Space and body were as one.
KS: The void plays a crucial role, even in your spherical objects in combination with strings. I think of, for example, “New Planet” (p. 62, 63), in which a white ball is hung conically by strings, as if it is almost hovering in the upper airspace. Or the austere work, “Bundle” (p. 64, 65), which through an extension of the threads results in an open Field (p. 61). A minor change creates a big impact. How do you see the relationship between space and mass in the “sphere suspensions”?
AD: Spheres with strings form a further category in the sphere works. In this case the string represents the line as an element of drawing, and the sphere represents the sculptural figure. Although a string also has volume, in comparison to a sphere, it is minimal. I like this combination, because of its apparent and a little more comprehensible contrast. While the spheres are a sculptural mass, the individual thread barely has volume. But it can measure the space and it can form volume in its quantity, therefore it has, in a manner of speaking, sculptural capabilities. The strings obtain tension through the weight of the ball, and the ball in turn receives a connection to the space: a direction, an orientation, and a fixed movement radius. In these works, space and mass are mutually dependent; they exist in a precisely balanced ratio of interdependency.
KS: You use string as a sculptural material and describe it as a line in space. In the video work “cachemain” (p. 24, 76, 77) you carry out a simple story line, in which a thread of wool assumes the function of a graphic, drawing-like line. In the process a hand wrapped in wool is gradually revealed. Then you change the medium and the working method and draw a line with a pencil on a spherical surface, or make drawings on paper, in which delicate lines entangle themselves or it is as if fine metal threads are suspended on an invisible nail on the wall (p. 79). What are your thoughts on this?
AD: While I am working, I do not know at which inner place, that the various activities, observations, and experiences flow together. Usually there is no causal connection in the realization of a piece to the following one; there is no temporal proximity, and certainly no chronology. In “Sphere/Drawing” (p. 75) I was interested in what would become of the line, when placed on a spherical surface, which means I started from the idea of drawing. While drawing on the sphere, I discovered the similarity between the gesture of drawing and the winding of yarn into a ball. It was the same spatial, repetitive movement, but with a pencil. I only noticed the outer resemblance to a ball of yarn afterwards. In this case, the relationship of these two works lies in the motion. Both are originated from a specific understanding of an object.
KS: Drawings, murals, objects—they occur temporally, often in parallel. I think about the wall objects with the mostly black spheres in particular, which form a ring or a chain, or the line of spheres suspended in space, which form a knot at the end. (p. 73). Do the drawings accompany the objects or do the objects inspire the drawings? With the shift from two-dimensionality to three-dimensionality, and vice versa, not only a change of medium, but also a shift in perception is involved. Is that right?
AD: At the beginning of this phase, drawing and sculpture emerged and existed independently from each other. Often I could see the relationship between a drawing and a sculpture only in retrospect. But it also happens that while I draw a motif, I become interested in how it might look like for example, the overlapping circles in three dimensions. Sometimes the transformation does work. But sometimes the motif can be actualized only either in two - dimension, or in three-dimension. While working I could see interconnections in-between medium. But this means more than just a change of perspective. It establishes and keeps a process of development running.
KS: “Process of development” is a term that I would not necessarily associate with your work. The spatial reference, the reduced aesthetics—usually in black and white—, the focus on the perception, the elimination of the artist’s ductus, these are all aspects that I rather associate with minimal art and conceptual art. Of course, there are also clear differences, especially with regard to the understanding of art as a pure idea. Yet, what do you think about these art movements?
AD: I like minimal art. For me personally, there is a lot within this art movement that is very important. I like its logic, its readability, and the idea of creating one’s own language with art. Just like the artists of minimal art, I work preferably with objects and materials that don’t speak for themselves, and are not charged with meaning: a black string, a sheet of paper, a black or white sphere. I am concerned with the sculptural, spatial, tactile qualities of these things, to their behavior, and that this behavior is recognizable to the viewer. Everyone knows what a sheet of paper feels like. It’s also important that they are simple things, and that I can use them in a versatile way. While I work, I’m in a system without terms, like in a game with its own logic and dynamics. I observe as things change. It is an open process, a process-oriented work with an uncertain outcome. This approach is far from being conceptual; in this sense, I’m rather more intuitively minded.
KS: Your approach is therefore both analytical and intuitive. Moreover, in your current work you imply a playful moment that becomes increasingly more important. Many recent works deal with the ornament as a playful form (p. 125). On the one hand you’ve used geometry and other mathematical theorems, and on the other hand, ornamental pattern becomes frequently present in your work. I’m thinking especially of your “patterns” as drawings with circle templates, linear murals made of MDF or paper (p. 120), or the new wall pieces. How do geometry and ornament fit together for you, and what is the significance of the ornament in your current work?
AD: I was always very interested in the subject of the “ornament,” but never incorporated it into sculpture. It was inherent in earlier works, that’s for sure, but was not yet formulated as is the case in the more recent works. Ornament has a lot to do with geometry but has no spatial aspect. To create a pattern I first design a linear grid as a basis. At the intersections of the lines I place a point - or a sphere. I could develop manifold patterns with this simple geometrical structure as a basis. It is really like a game: add two, subtract one, add three, subtract two - it can go on endlessly. In contrast to drawing, the three dimensional wall ornament that I construct with the spheres interferes to the room, because it always creates new shapes and patterns with the change of the viewing perspective. (p. 29, 126, 127)
I’ve realized that my wall ornaments have a lot to do with sculpture. Also, this way of working allows me great freedom; I can adapt the structure of the ornament to the dimensions of the space, so I can work in a site-specific manner, but it is open to be developed by itself as well. And all with a single element, the black sphere.
KS: You experiment with geometric shapes such as sphere, circle, triangle, or square. In the wall relief with the Lamellos that you installed at a slight distance from the wall on small nails (p. 28), you even combined trapezoidal, circular, and square shapes into one form. Max Bill was interested in the development of an elementary visual language with nonobjective organizing principles in mathematics by mentally training the eye. Like for his teacher Josef Albers, for him the square was a neutral platform for the invention of a timeless principle of form. In order to actualize it, he used visual techniques such as mirroring, rotation, doubling, or repetition of formalistic elements. The image became more and more of a visual field. I think your work continues this tradition, but extends the linguistic vocabulary, in view of the fact that besides the image area, the aspect of space plays a dominant role. Are you connected to this tradition?
AD: One can use the phrase “. . . development of an elementary imagery with geometric forms . . .” in connection to my work, although I do not work in such a strict programmatic manner. It reminds me, in your mention of concrete art, that the space also played an important role, because the artists were also working as designers, architects. The path from two-dimensionality toward three-dimensionality was in fact apparent in this art movement. However my rooms are not designed. I don’t assert that the room is a work of art, but rather work with the inherent characteristics of a space. For example, an artist like James Turrell incorporates the entire room into his work. Turrell removes all distractions, all of the everyday objects in the room beforehand, so as to focus entirely on the perception of his optical phenomena.
The manner in which I refer to the space, perhaps, lies between these two versions. The space is an important part of the event and the work, but the object and the space should be able to exist simultaneously, without it leading to a stage. I’m interested in bringing the abstract and the somehow ideal world of geometry into completely ordinary rooms.
KS: Resorting to geometry and ornamentation, consequently leads to a so-called objective, desubjectivized language of forms. In our previous conversations in your studio, you have also insisted that you do not want to be explicitly “seen” as a person in your work, in other words, that you consciously forgo incorporating personal subject matter into your art. In your work, do you formulate an argument for a strict separation of art and life? What type of connection exists for you between your life and work of art?
AD: There is a quote from Mark Rothko, although it has to do with a very different context, now it occurs to me in regard to your question: “I was aware of my heartfelt desire to make a place that is self-contained and that only belongs to me.”* I understand this need very well . . . In a “place that only belongs to me” there is no language. Having no terms for something means relaxation and concentration for me. I’m in such a space when I work. Yet, there is a close connection between my life and work, and not just my own work, but work of art in general. I am always looking for my very own way in art, just as works of other artists really affect me. You ask how this fits together with my objective use of forms ? The fact that I am seeking structures or regularities has a lot to do with my person. I always look at things in their entity and in their relation to the whole. In this respect, I do not see it so, that I don’t appear as a person in my work. I would like to talk about art but I do not talk about me, or about other matters outside of the art itself—so, in that sense, I do insist that there is a separation of art and life, that’s right. I believe, however, that life manifests itself in space and in the materiality of a sculptural body. Space is always a common space, an interspace, a connecting mass between us. Every person inevitably interrelates to the space, to the room and to another person, because she/he is a body herself/himself that moves in space. Everything that is in space, is also in the here and now of life.
* The quote is in regard to the Seagram Murals, a series of paintings that were commissioned for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building, New York, 1958.
Quoted from: Mark Rothko Retrospective, Hubertus Gassner, Christiane Lange, and Oliver Wick, eds. (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 1998), 31. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name, shown at the Kunsthalle Hamburg / Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, 2008.