Susanne Roewer. Alternative Universes

About

For Susanne Roewer, who studied material technology before completing an art degree at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, the contemporary sculpture is “the product of the necessary interplay between the capabilities and skills humans have acquired during their long evolution and their desire to render tangible immaterial things like force, transcendence, reason, freedom or love.”

Susanne Roewer’s works combine the artist’s intense interest in materials with an artistic sensibility and conceptual wit. Her sometimes extensive research and observations lead her to historical figures and events, folk art and old fables, but also to current socio-political debates and events. The diversity of the themes reveals the contemporary in the historical, and returns that which is seemingly past back to the present. The humorous titles contrast with the seriousness of the works: the artist thereby challenges the spectator to follow her into the alternative universes of her art.

Susanne Roewer’s sculptures in particular are rooted in her exploration of elementary materials, such as metal, stone or glass, combining figurative elements with an abstract form language. During the process of creation, the artist is frequently guided by the material and its specific qualities. Yet this is done consciously, revealing the assurance with which the artist is able to master and shape the diverse substances and materials.

Her mastery of the different materials and materialities also manifests itself in her works on paper, which combine pen-and-ink drawing with watercolours and collage. Here Susanne Roewer shows herself to be a brilliant and also highly sensitive draughtswoman. At the same time, she quite literally coaxes new dimensions from the flat medium of paper, combining the special surfaces of different types of paper with other elements to form almost three-dimensional works.