Artists

Biedlingmaier, Lisa

mem, 2021-2022
(c) Lisa Biedlingmaier; Foto: Lisa Biedlingmaier

Lisa Biedlingmaier’s sculptural works are characterized by the use of textile materials such as rope, nets, and felt. The artist employs techniques including tying and knotting to develop sculptural entities from her source material - formations that interact with the space around them, its architecture, and its history. Biedlingmaier frequently draws on macramé, a knotting technique that originated in the Arab-Islamic world, to create ornamental patterns. The artist ascribes a wide range of meanings to macramé knots, which can symbolize physical tensions and stressors, but also memories, opinions, or beliefs. Sculptures including mem (2021–2022) - the title references a spiritual healing method developed by Spanish therapist Elisa Carbajo Pereda—explore flow as a strategy for resolving inner conflicts. The artist’s works negotiate the complex and often unstable relationship between body and mind.
Relax (2021), a sculpture on view at the Alte Kelter, belongs to a series of works that stem from Biedlingmaier’s exploration of death as a subject matter. For it she adopted an intercultural perspective, looking at life through the lens of death - something performance-driven Western societies rarely do. Relax is not a visual illustration of this experience. Instead the viewer finds a counterpart that,due to its dimensions and morphology, appears at once human and autonomous. The ornamental structure gives visual expression to inner life and raises questions that are of utmost importance for our coexistence: How can we maintain flexibility and openness to other ways of perceiving new possibilities and opinions? How can we affirm a future that is unknown to us? Simultaneously imposing and fragile, the intertwined pattern structures suggest potentially infinite expansion. The work points far beyond the individual to evoke universality, planetary coexistence, and unity.

Text: Sebastian Schneider; englische Übersetzung: Amy Patton

Lisa Biedlingmaier’s sculptural works are characterized by the use of textile materials such as rope, nets, and felt. The artist employs techniques including tying and knotting to develop sculptural entities from her source material - formations that interact with the space around them, its architecture, and its history. Biedlingmaier frequently draws on macramé, a knotting technique that originated in the Arab-Islamic world, to create ornamental patterns. The artist ascribes a wide range of meanings to macramé knots, which can symbolize physical tensions and stressors, but also memories, opinions, or beliefs. Sculptures including mem (2021–2022) - the title references a spiritual healing method developed by Spanish therapist Elisa Carbajo Pereda—explore flow as a strategy for resolving inner conflicts. The artist’s works negotiate the complex and often unstable relationship between body and mind.
Relax (2021), a sculpture on view at the Alte Kelter, belongs to a series of works that stem from Biedlingmaier’s exploration of death as a subject matter. For it she adopted an intercultural perspective, looking at life through the lens of death - something performance-driven Western societies rarely do. Relax is not a visual illustration of this experience. Instead the viewer finds a counterpart that,due to its dimensions and morphology, appears at once human and autonomous. The ornamental structure gives visual expression to inner life and raises questions that are of utmost importance for our coexistence: How can we maintain flexibility and openness to other ways of perceiving new possibilities and opinions? How can we affirm a future that is unknown to us? Simultaneously imposing and fragile, the intertwined pattern structures suggest potentially infinite expansion. The work points far beyond the individual to evoke universality, planetary coexistence, and unity.

Text: Sebastian Schneider; englische Übersetzung: Amy Patton

mem, 2021-2022
(c) Lisa Biedlingmaier; Foto: Lisa Biedlingmaier