Vanessa Henn I Soft Serve

“I observe, document, search, or find. I collect, arrange, and combine.” That’s what Vanessa Henn (*1970 in Stuttgart) says. It sounds quite simple when one wants to imagine this process as simple. All the more impressive are the works that have emerged from it in recent decades: documented in Vanessa Henn’s just-published monograph “Same Same”; and to be experienced live in her current exhibition at the Sturm & Schober Gallery. Under the title “Soft Serve,” the Berlin-based artist presents new works, almost exclusively created in the past three months. With remarkable consistency, she draws from a found world of things, which she transforms into an extremely enriching cycle of utilization. Depending on whether one considers the material or the forms she creates from it, references to Arte Povera are found in her works as well as to Concrete Art. In fact, this cannot be separated in Vanessa Henn’s work: because her art is concrete in a formal-abstract sense. But the “poor” materials she works with always also tell of the reality of life from which they come. This applies to the mostly found, discarded handrails and stair railings made of wood, iron, or PVC, as well as to the building materials concrete, plaster, or reinforcement mesh, which are increasingly added to her recent works. The artist plays and experiments with these ingredients. In doing so, she not only shapes, deforms, or distorts the material she works with but also our perception of it. In the wall work La folie se gagne, the titular madness seems to physically and metaphorically pour through the bars of a signal-colored painted fence. In the work Soft Serve, the hardened concrete is “held together” by joint material made of sulfur-yellow polymer gypsum. And under the concreted duvet (a kind of quilted down comforter), one would not want to be willingly buried. In the work Bei Einbruch der Nacht, on the other hand, the sculptor obviously and subtly undermines the overused concept of the pedestal sculpture. The wonderful small sculptures Iceberg and Mountain suggest that stone can penetrate even hard steel. Similarly suggestive and confrontational, Vanessa Henn proceeds in her sketchy collages, in which she condenses the described process of observing and documenting, collecting, arranging, and combining two-dimensionally. This is not only well-intentioned and well-executed but always to the point. The artist has internalized this gift – as a sculptor as well as an image processor. – Dr. Ralf Christofori