Sibylle Waldhausen – Menschen und Räume

Schach! Herausfordernd und selbstbewusst stellt sie sich ihm entgegen. Er ist perplex. Sie scheint ihn überrascht zu haben und spielt genüsslich ihre Karte aus. Das ausgestellte Becken, die rausgestreckte Brust – alles deutet auf ihre lässig demonstrierte Überlegenheit und auch wenn man ihre Gesichtszüge nicht erkennen kann, so spürt man förmlich, mit welcher Kampfeslust sie ihn mustert. Er ist ihr zugewandt, überlegt, was er tun kann, das Fragezeichen steht ihm ins Gesicht geschrieben. Er scheint zwischen Fassungslosigkeit und Schicksalsergebenheit hin und her zu schwanken. Sie macht einen Schritt auf ihn zu, er kann nicht ausweichen. Kann er sich retten?
Sibylle Waldhausen ist eine scharfsinnige Beobachterin. In ihrer ersten Einzelausstellung in der Stern-Wywiol Galerie zeigt uns die Berliner Künstlerin (geb. 1963) die Veränderungen und Herausforderungen der globalisierten und digitalisierten Welt auf, indem Sie uns den damit einhergehenden Werte- und Rollenwandel bewusst werden lässt. Sibylle Waldhausen hat die Fähigkeit, Dinge auf den Punkt zu bringen und eindringliche Bilder für abstrakte Begriffe zu finden. Der medialen Welt begegnet sie dabei mit einem uralten Material – Bronze – und traditioneller plastischer Handarbeit.

Speech at the vernissage of the exhibition "People and Spaces" Sibylle Waldhausen by Dr Kathrin Reeckmann, 16.11.2012

Hamburg's main railway station, just a three-minute walk from our gallery, is a world in miniature. This is where everyone's paths cross:

The paths of the hurried and the slow, the explorers and the aimless, the latecomers and the waiting, the travellers and the stranded. Added to this is the sound of the big city made up of voices, engine noise and honking horns, the sound of classical music and sometimes street music.

The taxi rank between the station and the theatre is an island of peace and order. The cars are neatly lined up, the drivers are reading or standing together chatting. And quite often you can see some of them playing chess:
- A rubbish bin serves as a table with a folding board on top, a red tin of sandwiches (it is always red) serves as a container for the pieces
- Men around it in concentrated relaxation, young and old

Amidst the anonymous scenery of the railway station, the chess players create an image of intimacy and culture that I always look forward to.
It is the game of chess as an ancient, sophisticated cultural technique, analogue and connecting.
It is the game of chess as an image of those who play it, as an image of human society: the roles are distributed, can sometimes be changed, everything is connected to everything else: the strong and the weak, attack and defence.
The chessboard is a clearly defined space in which the pieces move
The position in which the chess pieces stand says something about their possibilities for action, about their function in the whole.
The chessboard with its pieces appears as a metaphor for our society.

And this is also the theme of the sculptor S. Waldhausen:
Like an ethnologist, she researches the behaviour of the human species, is interested in patterns of action and hierarchies, analyses attitudes and structures.
The chess game and the many other works on the subject of chess that you can see here are just one facet of her approach to this topic.

SW does not need a lot of staff to explore the diversity and abysses of human existence: A man, a woman, at most a crown as a prop. She works solely with proportions, body language and surface as a means of representation.

For example:
- The queen who maintains her composure despite all hostility.
- The biblical governor Pilate, who clings to his high throne and makes himself look small with his knowingly wrong decision.
- Or the "guy with the dog" who wants to conceal his own insecurity with the aggressive animal.
- Or the "awkward couple" who still have to find their way together with their lust.
SW is an artist who uses the classic medium of sculpture to address very topical issues.

She is interested in the new distribution of roles between men and women, questions hierarchies, thematises feelings such as loneliness, forlornness, power and powerlessness, and examines groups and their inherent dynamics.

Her working method is classical: she moulds her figures in wax or plaster, applies layer after layer and works the surface with her fingers and tools. Her sculptures are delicate and slender, the surface is a fine, moving relief. SW thus stands in the tradition of classical modernism, in the tradition of Auguste Rodin, who painted with his hands, and Alberto Giacometti, who sought a form for the human being as such and for the integration of sculpture/human beings in space

Waldhausen's figures are also classical in the sense that they are naked. Their nudity is so self-evident that one hardly notices it. The great, the actual subject of sculpture, the human body, is what interests SW. They are entirely determined by their posture. SW knows how to capture man's relationship to the world in a gesture, in a posture, can capture entire stories, be they dramas or comedies, in a single picture.

SW moved from the human figure and its foundation, the pedestal, to the theme of the house a few years ago and since then has repeatedly focussed on man's built environment.

By understanding the city as a sculptural form, it becomes a medium in which current themes such as the permanent compulsion to change, the increasing speed of life or the isolation of modern man can be artistically realised.

I would like to draw your attention to the work "Tetris", named after the famous computer game in which geometric shapes fall from above and have to be organised into an orderly whole by the player in a matter of seconds. In SW's work, abstract house cubes are piled up and into each other, seemingly without any inner order, leaving only a narrow gap for the little church that is half anxiously, half confidently pushing its way in.

Or the concrete houses, built using the classic application technique and covered with gold leaf on the inside. They show the human dwelling as a protective shell, repellent and anonymous on the outside, mystically radiant on the inside and at the same time standing on shaky ground, half in dance, half in earthquake.

Ladies and gentlemen, SW is an artist with very special abilities. She finds vivid images for our emotional states, hopes and fears. She reflects on the relationship between reality and appearance, scrutinises our certainties and holds up a mirror to us - one of the most difficult and exciting qualities of art. And she demonstrates humour in her works, very subtly and sometimes hidden. But I don't have to explain that to you, you will discover it for yourself.

Thank you for listening and I wish you a stimulating evening.