Christiane Löhr
Christiane Löhr, born in Wiesbaden in 1965, is one of the most respected international sculptors of her generation. After studying at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf as a master student of Jannis Kounellis, she was invited by Harald Szeemann to the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. In 2023, the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck honored her work with a wide-ranging survey exhibition. Today, Christiane Löhr lives and works in both Cologne in Germany and in Tuscany in Italy.
With her works, the artist creates an impressive sculptural and installative cosmos built from various natural materials. She uses flying seeds, plant stems, burdocks, tree blossoms or horsehair to construct her works - which are reminiscent of architecture, landscapes or vessels - and places this material in a new context, both architecturally and spatially. She finds all plant parts and seed heads rather casually in everyday life on the move, in nature or in the urban environment. The artist observes, studies, preserves, arranges and transforms the supposedly ephemeral and creates precisely constructed objects with titles such as Small Dome, Dandelion Cushion or Convex Hair Net. These are always clearly positioned in relation to the space. "Bringing four stalks of grass into a room is a radical, risky approach," says Christiane Löhr. The sculptor uses pencil, oil pen and ink for her drawings, some of which are large format. Sometimes the lines are sensitively drawn, sometimes powerfully executed, sometimes the pencil is firmly set, sometimes the organic-looking motifs appear washed out. When drawing, Christiane Löhr always pays close attention to how differently the tools touch the paper, and she always explores the space emerging on the sheet.
The concentrated presentation brings together around 30 works, sculptures as well as drawings, and shows how both groups of works interact to form an excitingly poetic and conceptual oeuvre. The fact that the artistic path Christiane Löhr is pursuing today has something to do with her winning a horse in a lottery is revealed in the film accompanying the exhibition, "Cosmos and Context. An encounter with Christiane Löhr" by Marietta Schwarz and Katja Izmestyeva (2024, ca. 25 min.).