ART-PRESENTATION: Christiane Lӧhr, Winner of Pascali Award 2016
Christiane Löhr’s work is quintessentially ecological and eco-sustainable, for it uses strictly natural, and thus fully biodegradable, materials which are gathered according to a principle of proximity to places frequented by the artist. Pino Pascali Museum Foundation in Polignano a Mare hosts an by exhibition Christiane Lӧhr the winner of the 19th edition of the Pino Pascali Award.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Foundazione Museo Pino Pascali Archive
Christiane Löhr when she was 18 she won a horse, in a game of bingo at a local stable. Her parents allowed her to keep it and she took care of it. “When I started, I discovered Land Art, and the Arte Povera in books and catalogues, and it was opening my horizon. I could understand that everything can go into art, and everything I decide can be art”. Löhr attended an art school nearby so that she could continue to see her horse. Moving to the Art Akademie in Düsseldorf, she chose to work with Jannis Kounellis because she was attracted by his photographs and famous Installation with horses. Sculpture is a term that comes up again and again in conversation with Christiane Löhr. Whether the artist is talking about her drawings, or large-scale works in space created from chains, plant stalks or horse hair. The formats can vary fundamentally in her work. The last large pillar in space, which she realised in 2015 for the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum in Shizuoka in Japan, was created out of horse hair and six metres in height. But she focuses on more than just creating form in a particular size. The artist, who also works in Italy but is standing in her light-filled Cologne studio, describes it thus: “For me it’s about appropriating space, in all my works”. In drawing, therefore, her interest is in how the line is made, what the line does and how it absorbs the space around it, or can change that space. And her works in space too are about taking possession, and at the same time transformation, through placement in space. Löhr’s works illustrate circumstances and connections from our immediate present, and do so in a discreet and yet insistent manner. They make us sensitive to the principles, systems and intricacies of our surroundings. Not just to her chosen materials, but also, particularly, to the atmospheric shifts of a given room.
Info: Pino Pascali Museum Foundation, via Parco Del Lauro 19, Polignao A Mare, Bari, Duration: Tue-Sun 11:0-13:00 & 17:00-21:00, www.museopinopascali.it
