Esther Kläs – Estar (2019)

The great sculptural traditions of the twentieth century – particularly post-war abstraction and Minimalism – have visibly influenced the German artist Esther Kläs (b. 1981). And yet her work is strongly rooted in the present day. Kläs constantly challenges the boundaries of sculpture. She uses malleable materials that she shapes by hand, such as cement, clay, plaster and Styrofoam, and deliberately does not conceal the traces of the creative process, such as bubbles in resin and fixing wires. The intimate physical relationship that she has with her work also translates into a direct physical impact of her sculptures on the viewer.

This also has to do with her references to the human body. Sometimes these are implicit, because of the human scale with which she works or the abstract forms that she selects, which give the impression of a body sitting or leaning against a wall. At other times, the body is directly represented through the use of elbows and knees cast in plaster. In this way, Kläs’s works encourage reflection on our own physicality in relation to our surroundings.

Although the individual objects are impossible to interpret unambiguously, Kläs’s exhibitions – which consist not
only of sculptures but also of drawings and paintings – function as ensembles of elements that are in dialogue with one another and with the space. The notion of animated matter comes to mind, of the presence of a mysterious energy. The visitor is effectively forced to break that indefinable mutual bond or otherwise to become part of it. In this way, the artist plays with the question of how matter influences us and how we influence matter.

For DELIRIOUS, Kläs installed an elongated sheet of cast aluminium, leaning against a pole. Here, too, using minimal abstract forms, Kläs succeeded in creating the impression of an individual trying to remain standing within the complex world around them.