Peter Assmann

SPEED KILLS – BUT WHAT?

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In contrast my second artist’s contribution is presented completely differently. The porcelain shapes by Gabriele Hain focus on materiality. They are so delicate they threaten to shatter with each breeze and in this fragility they naturally oppose any attempts at acceleration – above all every type of rapid approach, appropriation, consumption or reception. The artist mostly creates vessels, which are so thin-walled that they can only be viewed or picked up with a great deal of caution, hence without speed. Her art is a matter-of-fact opposition to acceleration, against all that which I previously introduced as symptoms of the Speed Generation. Nevertheless or precisely because these objects have emerged in the Speed Generation the artist is anchored with her objects in a matter-of-fact functioning, global information network. Her audience appreciates her work around the entire globe and she is probably one of the few European artists consistently invited to Japan and her special conceptual designs are developed and presented before a broad, interested public in many symposiums and workshops. Above all her vessel sculptures stand for an all-encompassing concentration, for a contemplative attitude of immersion, a great quiet – a quiet that the artist herself strives to live and that she structures as a setting for the creative process of her art as a conscious counter movement to speed. It is completely clear that major quiet and concentration are needed to form these objects, not least of all to bear the frustration as again and again many of these designs flounder due to the sheerness of the porcelain materials and shatter in the kiln. What the finished object represents is a celebration of the material possibilities used with the most extreme concentration: a blatant call to proceed with caution, with due consideration, to pause, to put on the brakes. Perhaps it should also be remarked that the artist’s vessels also stand for a globalised intertwining and cooperation between Eastern and Western art concepts and traditions. She uses traditional Japanese forms, but clearly and unequivocally reacts against them. The same goes for a Western perspective.

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from: think tank EDITION 06

Dr. Peter Assmann, Linz, Austria
Art Historian
Director of the Palazzo Ducale, Mantova, Italy