Mutter Seelen Allein, 2004
The inexplicable tension between emergence and disappearance, revelation and concealment, finds expression in Claudia Sarnthein’s delicate, thread-like drawings in which only the slightest suggestion of form is offered. Rather than description, they seem to be about making their presence felt, about being palpable rather than knowable. There seems to exist some deep connecting order between these viral-like clusters, feathers, fronds and filaments, which weave in and out of space tentatively, unsure of whether or not to make themselves seen. These forms act as metaphorical openings, fragile traceries of a passage of thought preoccupied with such questions as “What does it mean to be an object?” and “How does an object come to make its presence felt, against the interminable void?”. They could thus be described as residues of a search to distil the essence of so-called objecthood; residues that exist only on thresholds, that remain suspended in varying states of the between, and leave behind lasting imprints.
Kamini Vellodi, Slow Forming, Blyth Gallery/Imperial College, London, 2005
The inexplicable tension between emergence and disappearance, revelation and concealment, finds expression in Claudia Sarnthein’s delicate, thread-like drawings in which only the slightest suggestion of form is offered. Rather than description, they seem to be about making their presence felt, about being palpable rather than knowable. There seems to exist some deep connecting order between these viral-like clusters, feathers, fronds and filaments, which weave in and out of space tentatively, unsure of whether or not to make themselves seen. These forms act as metaphorical openings, fragile traceries of a passage of thought preoccupied with such questions as “What does it mean to be an object?” and “How does an object come to make its presence felt, against the interminable void?”. They could thus be described as residues of a search to distil the essence of so-called objecthood; residues that exist only on thresholds, that remain suspended in varying states of the between, and leave behind lasting imprints.
Kamini Vellodi, Slow Forming, Blyth Gallery/Imperial College, London, 2005