Sabine Schirdewahn
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Mixed media, 1992
The First Things
An interior – a laid table, two chairs – in a single colour and made of a single material, all waxy and whitish: the people are missing, but they are not absent. On the contrary, it is almost impossible to imagine them sitting in the chairs, for example. And this is despite the fact that we are dealing here with quite banal, everyday objects. So why this reluctance to include people in this interior?
The individual objects are both more and less ‘thing’ than usual. Their particular ‘thingness’ is based on the fact that their respective forms are shown to their best advantage, without any distracting patterns, inscriptions or changing colours. Only the form condenses, as it were, the essence of the objects, superimposing the various appearances and images from memory that have accumulated over time into a single image. It is not a particular chair, not a particular cup … that is shown here, but the chair, the cup … is timeless; not reduced to the elementary but condensed into the universal.
This apotheotic character of the objects, resulting from the intensity of the form, gives them an open-ended meaning that extends to the mysterious. They become charged precisely because they no longer have a function. Each viewer can interpret the atmosphere they create in his or her own way, or perhaps leave it in abeyance – either way, they will fall into a certain devotional mood and experience the transformation of the profane into something sacred in the broadest sense.
But precisely because they are deprived of their usual usefulness, the objects are also less ‘thing’ than usual, not suited to the fleeting and purely functional nature of most actions and activities. If one really wanted to engage with them, their form would itself demand form, namely a clear, conscious, rigorous way of life. For people who cannot demonstrate such a form, the objects keep them at a distance, creating a threshold that prevents them from getting too close. What remains for the time being is reverent contemplation; and here a statement by Peter Handke applies: ‘Apotheosis and reverence are the same.’
Wolfgang Ullrich, 1993
Translation: Gérard A. Goodrow