Suse Bauer
When Suse Bauer's textured abstract drawings are introduced to the London art public on Wednesday, October 10 with "Enter the Path," curator Emma Dexter's first exhibition as the director of exhibitions at the Timothy Taylor gallery, she will be one of three artists who will help to catapult one of London's top galleries into a new era. That seems like a lot of responsibility to place on the twenty-eight-year-old Hamburg-based artist's delicate geometrical drawings and art-deco inspired installations. But Bauer's art has a vivid, compelling quality. While her profile on Saatchi Online hints at her work's appeal, her drawings need to be confronted in the flesh to be fully appreciated. Inspired by her visits to Jerusalem, they evoke a child-like attraction to experimentation, combined with a mature sense of design, form and composition. They are at the same time sensual and structured; playful and intellectual. As Dexter writes: "In a series of small drawings and collages, Bauer's rocks, stones and crystalline structures strive for perfection, they speak of desire, longing and supreme effort."
'Inner freedom', 2007
(220 x 220 x 330 cm) mixed media
ANA FINEL HONIGMAN: What are your main inspirations for your designs and color decisions?
SUSE BAUER: My creative process starts when I become fascinated by a form, a surface, an idea of color temperature, a formal idea of a transition between directions or colors or the severity of a certain form. I get my inspiration from everyday sources such as decoration products in Turkish supermarkets, cheap glamour, churches, acting, and incensed emotions in the media, peoples' helpless efforts to make the false promises we get every day come true.
AFH: Are you saying that the designs you create symbolize peoples' false hopes? Or do they become completely disconnected from their source material for you, once you appropriate them?
SB: Some symbolize peoples' in vain attempts to fulfill their false hopes. The source material gets transformed and within that disconnected, but the surroundings, the atmospheres, the tragic or the story of the source situation is kept for me.
AFH: Are you disappointed with the way your work looks in reproduction, since texture is such a significant part of experiencing what you do and the materials you use?
SB: So far there have been no reproductions. The main thing that the works loose, when being photographed, is their body, the thickness and the edges. Probably only seeing the originals makes it possible to get their severity.
AFH: There may not be any formal reproductions, but you do have images of your work online, including Saatchi On Line. Are you concerned that your work goes not translate well in images, and that might undermine potential interest in your art?
SB: Yes. Haptic, size and dimensionality are not translatable and this is an important loss in reproduction. If you see my works face to face, they are related to the dimensions of people. You need to see by yourself that a sculpture is hollow at the knee seated and its sharp edges stick out there, or if, for example, the sculpture is overtopping you and looks exactly the same from all sides. Another important aspect is surface and structure and its relation with lighting that plays an important role. At "Inner Freedom" the surface and the physical capacity needs to be experienced as well as the reflection of the microbubbles at its surface, which makes the floor sculpture look as if it sweats. Also, the oil-drawings are in a way three dimensional and many of the surfaces interact with light in terms of reflections and accentuation of sharp edges.
'I'm the Queen, I sit on my own throne, I'm the Queen, I sit in my empire', 2007
(21 x 29,7 cm) marker, sticker, photo, oil on paper
AFH: Your first show in London is a three-person show. How do you think your work relates to the other two artists?
SB: I saw the works of Andrew Palmer and Edward Wright only online, and from that perspective, it is difficult to say much. But, having said that, I am sure that there is a lot of potential and interesting tension in this combination of artists. Their works seem to be very decided; not loud and not posing but deep and personal. But we will know more when we see the works together in the space. I can't wait to see it and I am very excited about this exhibition.
AFH: You have mostly exhibited in group-shows before. What sort of work do you think works best with yours?
SB: I don't really know. With very few exceptions I had space for myself in the group exhibitions; if not I built a room for myself. So this show will be a new experience for me in terms of sharing a space willingly with two very interesting artists. I will need to find out more about works that will work best with mine.
AFH: How did you respond to another German-born abstract painter, Tomma Abts, winning last year's Turner Prize?
SB: I was happy that a female artist won the price. Her works seem obtrusively arranged and somehow cranky to me, which is what I like about them.
AFH: How did you first connect with the Timothy Taylor gallery?
BS: They found me. I met Emma Dexter at Scope Basel in June this year, where she saw my works and brought me to London.
AFH: How do the titles of your works relate to the images?
SB: The titles are names of the works, which I give them to personalize them. They are important to me because they give direction to my approach.
AFH: Which comes first - the titles or the visuals?
SB: The visuals come first. When I start working on a drawing, at first there are no words and there is no subject. At that stage, the formal decisions are made by intuition. In the process, the character of the work develops and relationships between the persons and situations start becoming apparent. Only when the drawing is finished and I have seen it for a while, can I then find the name.
AFH: What is it about abstraction that you think makes it still relevant in today's art world?
SB: I am not sure which forms are relevant in today's art world. For me relevance comes out of my personal fascination of works. I can be fascinated by many different and even contradictive aspects. It can be just the idea, the personality of the artist inside the work, a certain penitence or weakness, a vision, a passion or just a surprise. No matter if the works are concrete or abstact. In my case I don't see my works really as abstract works. They are more transformations of ideas, persons and stories, that are important to me personally, into something more open, more general - without loosing the point and still keeping the physical tension somehow.
'Bald erreichst Du Perfektion' (soon, you are going to reach perfection), 2007
(21 x 29,7 cm) marker, sticker, oil on paper
AFH: Why do you select the mediums and materials you do?
SB: The decisions are mainly related to the material. For example, I use the black markers because I love the sound of the marker on paper, the colour gradient when the marker runs dry and the dullness, and dryness of the black. Also I love shopping in building centres. Maybe better, are home improvement stores. I know when I see the material, I take it and I start to work with it. There is not a concept at the beginning, ideas are developing while working with the material. I am finding the relation between the
material and the medium with the context in the process.
AFH: Describe for me your "Inner Freedom" installation, please.
SB: I did the installation for my last solo exhibition in Hamburg at the Feinkunst Kruger Gallery in May this year. The overall dimensions are: 220 x 220 x 330 cm and the materials are synthetic foam, pigment, glazed wood, marker, lights, paper, 36 framed collages. The 220 x 220 x 120 cm wooden box hangs above the sculpture and ends at the ceiling; the collages build a kind of corona. The collages show my own hand with different black stones, illustrating different phases of the stones, emerging crystals. In answering what it was, I'd like to quote Hans Statzer who wrote about the work like this: "The installation piece 'The inner freedom,' talks about promises, the longing for companionship, the chorus of the other, about the fear of loss, about the effort it takes to create crystals, about the need to be able to differentiate between good and evil and about innate optimism."
Enter the Path: Suse Bauer, Andrew Palmer, Edward Wright
10 October -- 17 November 2007
Timothy Taylor Gallery
21 Dering Street
London, W1S 1AL
ANA FINEL HONIGMAN is a critic, PhD candidate in art history at Oxford University and Senior London Correspondent for the Saatchi Gallery's online magazine. She also contributes to Style.com, Grazia, Tank, Sleek and Harper's Bazaar.
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