Installations
My installations from 2010, 2011 and 2012 related to belletrist texts, legends and written heritage. To describe them I developed the term „painting on sculptural picture carriers“. Figurative, painted wooden steles like in „Dream Path“ or figurative steel sheet templates like in „The Good Luck“ are the sculptural dividing elements of the room installations. Hereby painting is the centre of my artistic means of expression. This is clearly demonstrated by the „windows“ of the installation „Fountain Square and Water Temple“. By designing a room in the nature with painted elements I gain a perspective that reaches beyond the canvas. I make it possible for the viewers to actually enter a room which I created through my interpretation of the text source. They can move around in this room and literally follow my thoughts and feelings in order to bring the scenery to life with their own associations.
The involvement of nature and the uniqueness of the overall composition are further essential aspects of the installations. All items are created in close intertwining with the location so that the installation cannot easily be re-erected somewhere else. When elements of an already existing installation are re-used for another composition, another totally different room of experiences will come into existence.
Fountain Square and Water Temple
An installation on the Kunst- & Literaturpfad (KLP), Loreley 2012
Since the dawn of time people have a special connection to water: It’s the origin of life, ritually worshipped, subject to taboos, twined with myths and interwoven with fairy tales. In the holistic view of the Stone Age men water is an essence of the Great Goddess whose symbol is the captivating glance of her eyes.
The Edda tells about the Urd fountain under the world tree Yggdrasil. The three Nornes guard the fountain, cultivate and water the world tree, and weave the fate threads of the humans. Oracles from mirroring wells and swirling water were therefore quite common. Water can turn into healing water when it is drawn and used in silence at the right time like for example the Ostara water. For a long time a bath in the Rhine, in wells and fountains around the summer solstice was believed to have a strong healing effect. For Abraham’s fountain square the artist has painted these ancient customs and rites on canvas changing the colours in the style of church windows and had the painting printed on acrylic glass as a semitransparent picture. In the changing light the scenes appear like spectral apparitions from a long forgotten world.
DThe installation follows the holistic character of the ancient goddess: there is lots of earth at the fountain place. Water is flowing from the tube and runs off in an open pipe. The pillar of the temple is an old exhaust air pipe painted symbolically with breezy colours thus representing the third element, the air. Fire is found in the candle flames and the beams of the banning glance which already symbolised the sun on ancient cave wall paintings.
The artist declares the fountain square to a water temple. Thus she reminds us that water is still a precious good. As the saying goes:In dreams, mirrors and water you meet the sky and the earth..
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„Let your soul fly“
Installation on the occasion of the 10th YAM-Festival 2012on the Neuwagenmühle in Kördorf/Rheinland-Pfalz
„Art in God’s Garden“ is the motto of the YAM-Festival, which is held as a part of the Kultursommer Rheinland-Pfalz in the year 2012. The 300 year old water mill in the Jammertal is surrounded by thick forest.
The installation is designed for a small piece of woodland at the brook behind Udo Havekost’s „Church of Fear“, partly in dialogue with the building and also in contrast to it. The steles are taken from the installation „Dream Path“, but now they are being arranged in a totally different context and in relation to the location, so that there is a complete new situation. Two watchmen mark the location, one at the entrance behind the church and one on the slope next to the footpath. „The bodiless“ appears like a water spirit from the brook which has stopped at the crossing of the path that leads to the water. The centre of the installation are the three „soul birds“, who on the one side carry on the rhythm of the three vertical, narrow church windows and on the other side emphasize the upward striving of the trees with their adorational posture. The blue wooden block invites to sit down. High trunks rise towards the sky, the brook murmurs, birds are chirping and the wood smells damp and earthy. The viewer could get the impression to be all alone in nature. Thus the installation can turn into a place of silence and meditation.
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»The Good Luck« - Installation by Sylvia Catharina Hess on the Kunst- & Literaturpfad Loreley 2011 (KLP)
21-piece installation (2010/2011) from 8mm galvanized steel sheet, partly rust patinized and varnished, partly painted, mounted on 10mm galvanized and painted steel sheet bases or iron tubes, as well as various sizes of reverse painted acrylic plates partly inscribed.
In his poem „The blue flower“ (1818) Joseph von Eichendorff sings of a restless man who wanders through lands and times searching for the site where the blue flower grows without ever reaching his goal: „I search and never find it“. The seeker regards the blue flower as the symbol for his „good luck“. The illusion of reaching a state of complete happiness was initially described in the novel „Heinrich von Ofterdingen“, which had been written by Novalis 18 years earlier.
The blue flower had quite a career: in literature and visual arts it became a symbol for deep desire. Also the hiker’s movement used the blue flower in many poems as a symbol for the yearning for travelling far. However, in Novalis’ view the blue flower represented probably rather the longing for the unity of reality and dream world. In the dream of the blue flower a girl’s face appears in the middle of the blossom symbolising love. For the Romantics love is the foundation of thinking. In the extreme individualism of the Romantic the self alone incorporates feeling and thinking: The self is who thinks about themselves, the one who feels (and the one about whose thoughts and feelings others reflect); and finally it is the result of the reflexion about themselves: some kind of higher self.
The installation develops a tension from these two points of view.
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The Visit (La Visite)
An Installation Galerie Plein Ciel 2010, Fondation SyRo d'Arts Lautenbach-Zell (near Colmar), Alsace
5 figuratively painted steles, spruce wood on steel bases: a messenger - a young girl - a woman - another woman - a man
Does the man with the big bird on his head bring news of the imminent arrival of visitors? Four people, two women, a man and a young girl are looking at him. Their facial expressions range from open friendliness to fearful insecurity, anticipation and tension. Whose arrival is the messenger announcing?
Or is everything completely different? The messenger is clothed like the other people in the group. Are they on their way to visit someone and did they send the messenger to announce them? Which answer will he bring? Are they welcome, will they be rejected?
Who is visiting whom?
The figures look alien for the viewer. Their strange head gears are conspicuous, the colour of their clothes is unremarkable. Where are they coming from? Their faces are human but they cannot be assigned to a specific culture.The relations between the figures remain uncertain, as well. They are standing isolated, each for themselves but they do establish a group, they express togetherness.
The installation raises questions but does not offer any answers. It seems to tell us a story but the viewers have to invent the story themselves.
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Dream Path - based on the poem „Dreamway“ by Harald Braem
The installation „Dream Path“ was a prt of the „Kunst- und Literaturpfad“ (KLP), Loreley 2010, which was created by 8 artists.
16 figurative painted steles: The four watchmen - The two gate keepers - The child: beginning and end - The six wise ones: - the doubting woman - the masked man - the ancestor - The bodiless - the patient one - the old one -The three soul birds - 1 wooden block as a seat - 1 painted perspex plate with the poem and the name of the author
The KLP station „Dream Path“ plays with the possibility to retreat and to go on a journey to your own dreams, those which were long-cherished, forgotten, unfulfilled or never realized out of fear.
The figures are alien and intimate at the same time, they seem to come from another world. Ther „Dream Path“ takes the viewer into the world of dreams. In psychology dreaming is regarded as a „bizarre or hallucinating mental activity“combined with a series of pictures. In the dreams real experiences, thoughts, readings and much more is re-assembled in new and unusual images which can lead to new insight upon waking up.
If you open up to the effect of the installation you can realize that life is a flow in which something new is emerging all the time; that you can overcome your fears in order to live your dreams and that it has always been that ways since the dawn of time. From the hiking trail the steles are presented like standing on a stage, you can enter the installation on a footpath. Passing four watchmen you climb up a slope, walking past the gate keepers you reach the field of the wise ones and soul birds. Visitors are encouraged to walk around the figures because text fragments from the poem and related associations by the artist are written on the back sides of the steles. You can sit on the seat and send your soul on a journey with the „soul birds“ and to contemplate about life and dreams. By leaving the installation you will realize in a very literal way what the essential message of the poem says about the continuous changing process: „Life means arriving and leaving“.
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