Verena Weckwerth
- Words
- Caroline Kurze
During a project in a Spanish monastery Verena Weckwerth discovered her passion for silhouettes. Since the sculptress had to be able to transport her artwork on a plane and out of pure practical convenience, she decided to create silhouettes glued sailcloth. This is not only robust, but also easy to handle in processing.
+ Read MoreMeanwhile, the artist works with bookbinding cloth, and since 2000 has begun experimenting with different sectional shapes. Entering her studio, we find ourselves in a spacious room with her drawings and collages on the walls and a large table with one of her works, waiting for her hand and her cutter knive to be processed.
At the beginning of each work, Verena Weckwerth creates a collage that begins as a very fragmented piece of work and is expanded and elaborated repeatedly over time. As soon as the collage is detailed to her satisfaction, Verena begins with the next step – drawing or transferring the collage on tracing paper. At times she feels like only drawing and realized that her ‘drawings work as single pieces of art as well’.
It can take up to two months for her to complete a piece since after cutting up to five hours is very exhausting for the whole body, especially the hands.
In her motives, she plays with perspective and with the way every viewer has learned to experience perspective. She employs various techniques and different perspectives. At times the viewer is able to recognize a kind of a low angle shot or a one-point perspective. She irritates without confunsing the viewer entirely.
The symbol of a fish is a recurring motif. She explains that since she has spent a couple years of her life in Spain in proximity to the sea, a fish is just a fascinating creature. The mass dynamic of a shoal of fish is something infinitely exciting, something poetic. With her play of space, image and shadows, between positive and negative, her works are like life itself. Her works serve as a kind of personal explanation of the world, in which science but also internal and external journeys play a great role. Architectural perspectives part, merge back and give the organic ornaments form and structure.
Her most recent work is ‘Alice subkutan’ (Alice hypodermic) based on Lewis Carroll’s books ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking Glass’. It will probably be displayed on the SchönebergerArt, Berlin in November – we can’t wait.
Text by Hannah Edwards | Photography by Caroline Kurze
