Seven questions from Grudda to Grudda
1. What inspires you the most for creating your art, wha’s driving you on?
The challenge to continuously spring from the chaos; sifting out one option from multiple choices of thousands of possibilities, from the wild and unformed, the option which seems to be “the One” (it is a never-ending development to consolidate idea and realisation; attempting a synchronisation – which never completely succeeds! – Just like Sisyphos, ceaselessly starting all over again; I’m a little bit like that donkey, which has a carrot suspended at a safe distance in front of its nose, which keeps it running, though it will never reach it).
On the other hand – what a thrill in having succeeded to capture the tremble of life within a sculpture, a large etching or a painting: just like the flight of a dragonfly or the song of a nightingale, or a blackbird! – To be right on the trail of an archetype, as ancient as every sensation. To celebrate an impossibly old birthday together with the town of your
birth and everybody’s on board … painting/assembling 1000 large poles around you: this is exactly like igniting a star … if this can be achieved … hallelujah!
2. Confronted with most large-scale works by your colleagues at the foundry and their significant more important exhibitions – how do you deal with that? And do artists not always need to be able to develop a certain kind of inflated ego in order to assert themselves in the art world?
The large works by my colleagues, which are often much bigger than mine, are inspiration and incitement all at once: an invitation to find my own scale. A 7, 9 or 12 metres high phallus makes me smile, fair enough.
But some things only reveal and clarify themselves on a large scale: i. e. the large BLAU MIAU which dwarfs people into mice and simultaneously conveys the very risky daring of a young cat (which is also inherent in our behaviour while we play and love … ).
The formats of my paintings reach from miniature to 7 metre large installations (how else would the WILD SHEEP CHASE – exhibited here in the Gudensberg synagogue – emit such an intimidating impact? It surpasses the vi ewers perspective and becomes an “All-over”).
My bronzes are playing with all formats …
But could you design a huge square with tiny worms? A small 1 metre fountain simply appears insignificant in front of a 12 metre high building. The work has to measure up to the architecture, interact with it and at best, create a symbiosis.
The square is becoming a new location through the art, making it hospitable; a place to in habit.
3. How important is the relevance of your work in relation to location?
The location is very important – the wrong place can smother a sculpture or make it seem insignificant. A sculpture needs a matching, carefully selected location to convey its aesthetic message effectively. Especially since some works were created within a specific context – based on town tales and history, such as THE ENCHANTED at the Gudensberg roundabout, the fountain with the BLUE FLOWER or based on a sociological MICROCOSM – a square within a residential area in Zug, Switzerland, with a fountain and brook where children play about: they slalom around the legs of the large BLAU MIAU with their bicycles or sit astride in their threes and fours on the backs of FUCHUR and FIFIFI, the dogs. They ride on LULALU, the big tousled sheep and the smallest queue up in front of MAXI and MAURO, the little lambs.
They have their own private “pond” to dip into, supplied with fresh water and three little bubbling fish; there is also a sandpit, whose four gates are marked by bronze staffs, conveying the four elements. I was told, that sometimes up to 68 children play around the square – and this confirms to be exactly the right art work at the right location, giving great satisfaction to the artist and the commissioning commune.
However on a different level, something interesting occurs: The CERBERUS in San Lorenzo stands at the seaside, the one in Gudensberg in front of the city hall, my own one at the entrance to the sculpture park. Every one of them has now obtained its own patina, bestowed by the different climate, each effecting and changing its surroundings differently.
At the beach, children are sitting on CERBERUS who is surrounded by stones, so they can easily climb onto it. The CERBERUS in Gudensberg chaperons newly-weds posing in front of him for their photograph after the registry office. At my place, he is the guardian and herald to every visitor to the park. Each time he has a different impact and asserts a different identity. This is also exciting.
4. Your works often seem playful/joyful – what relation do they pose to reality?
Sometimes, I would like to believe them to be diametrically the opposite; the Anti-programme or, as my philosophy professor Odo Marquard would say now, the “anti-fiction”.
The artist’s task had once been to re-invent the world; this has now long been taken over by industry and economy and their “calculated error”.
Even Marcel Duchamp still aimed – ironically – to capture the world through his readymade, i. e. the bolted-on bicycle.
It is far from me to depict the world, reflect its horrors or emphasize them aesthetically. My answer is to endure it and to invent a few parameters for doing so – a defiant smile (no, I don’t claim to be exclusive) – it is al ways tied to the shadow behind, which discretely attaches itself to all my work: as if you could only express the burdens of this world lightly.
5. How does Carin Grudda’s work fit in with Carin Grudda as a person?
There are glaring differences on the surface. I’m reflecting the world contemplative and serious, although from time to time incensed, and ready to raise an argument and to act upon the conditions of my immediate surroundings and the world abroad …; also strict, disciplined and determined to carry the consequences of my thoughts and actions.
This attitude simultaneously corresponds to “enduring the world”. I would accommodate myself for the night in a strange hotel room and even change the furniture around to make it cosy. I would try to light up a candle in a crowded train bistro and make even the most bad-tempered waiter smile, or my coincidental table neighbour. I’m working away the fears, the coldness. No, no, not to escape – or maybe? Little breakouts from the certainty of a world which is always present. What could I achieve more than a little change within a snapshot … – which maybe draws further little circles like a stone cast into water …?
The observation, seeing with a dissecting knife and a subsequent small operation …, – so it doesn’t hurt so much, – these both combines Grudda with her work.
6. What fascinates you with art in public spaces?
Changing a deserted, empty and derelict square into a location for people; just like the washer women used to go to a well and exchange news, the children played around it, lovers met – you could say I’m driven by old-fashioned nostalgic and romantic notions.
I want my sculptures to be climbed on, to be at the heart of human activity at pi aces which had formerly grown anonymous; to put the soul back into it, maybe (This is what we all need, don’t you agree?).
Furthermore: what a great opportunity to create and define space through a sculpture! To turn a place up-side down by changing the dimensions – the laser from a king on a rooftop hitting the heart of a dancer who balances on the railings of a boat bubbling with water – a time beam which connects the Ingelheim of CharIes the Great with the Ingelheim of the 21st century (“Friedrich-Ebert-Platz” in Ingelheim) – a fool in the middle of a Boccia field, a group of dogs, racing chicken … – connotations taken from the various parts of the city, combined within a new square, a new centre.
A roundabout with “local” ladders, perched on them the ravens “Hugin” and “Munin”, companions to the god of thunder, Wotan, who gave Gudensberg its name. They squirt criss-crossed sprays of water; the small installation spiralling upward like a snail shell …
From time to time I would just cruise around this installation at the roundabout which combines heritage and future.
There is no graveyard silence of a museum, no art exclusively for the initiated – my little social attempt: art for everybody; to bring life into a bleak place, to have a celebration of every-day life … always all over again.
7. Is there a new project you are currently working on?
Yes, but it is not a commission, but a reflection on a subject which just happened to spring into existence on the 31st of December 2012: I was drawing a jump into a new sketchbook: a leap into the New Year. A leap into age – I will be sixty this year.
We always jump – from our birth to our death, every one of us. Sometimes we have a soft landing, sometimes we crash down or even fall into a hole. We leap from childhood into youth, into adulthood – into the family, away from the family, from one job to the next, from one country to the next, from company into loneliness. Every decision in our life is essentially a leap of faith.
This creates insecurity; you change over from the known to the unknown side: new territory. This begins with your first steps as a child.
But the “leap” stands for more: while there is always only one leg “in the air” while we walk, creating an unstable balance, you release bath legs from the ground while jumping – almost like starting to fly, even only for a moment.
This moment bereft of gravity is the cheerful, bright side filled with adrenalin …
I’m currently modelling a jump, no, the movement of launching into one in bronze (almost absurd in this heavy material).
Diagonally opposite from the envisaged location in Gudensberg (my hometown, which celebrates my anniversary with me), are three large exhibition rooms on the ground floor of the newly built pensioners’ social club house, which I was offered to use until it’s opening. They are connected with a large high-ceilinged corridor with a long wall. I will paint this leap directly onto it, as well as cast my work smock in bronze to mount it beside it and to place my work boots in front of it – after the leap through the wall, vanished on the other side …
Or simply just dissolved in the work – all across town …
Rome, 04/07/2013