Sibylle Eimermacher - STONE FOLDINGS

SIBYLLE EIMERMACHER STONE FOLDINGS

Trondhjemite quarry, Follstad (Støren)

Slate quarry, Sæteråsen

SIBYLLE EIMERMACHER STONE FOLDINGS Quartz Thulite Slate Pink Marble Soapstone Phyllite Larvikite Trondhjemite Graywacke

Quartz

Thulite

Slate_a

Slate_b

Slate_c

Pink Marble

Soapstone

Phyllite

Larvikite

Trondhjemite

Graywacke

Quartz_01

Quartz_02

Quartz_03

Thulite_01

Thulite_02

Thulite_03

Slate_a_01

Slate_a_02

Slate_a_03

Slate_b_01

Slate_b_02

Slate_b_03

Slate_c_01

Slate_c_02

Slate_c_03

Pink Marble_01

Pink Marble_02

Pink Marble_03

Slate_a_04

Slate_c_04

Soapstone_01

Soapstone_02

Soapstone_03

Soapstone_04

Phyllite_01

Phyllite_02

Phyllite_03

Phyllite_04

Larvikite_01

Larvikite_02

Larvikite_03

Larvikite_04

Trondhjemite_01

Trondhjemite_02

Graywacke_01

Graywacke_02

Graywacke_03

Graywacke_04

Title Stone Foldings Year 2014 Technique Piezo prints Size 27.9 x 21.0 cm / 55.4 x 42.0 cm Complete series 41 prints Edition 5 + 2 AP

Soapstone_05

Larvikite_05

Larvikite_06

STONE FOLDINGS NOTES ON THE WORKS OF SIBYLLE EIMERMACHER AND HER PRACTICE OF BEWILDERMENT WRITTEN BY INGER MARIE HAHN MØLLER

German artist Sibylle Eimermacher (b. 1979) works with a series of replacements – replacements of materials, of logic or defined truths, of art historical determinations, of what we perceive and think of as obvious and indisputable. These fundamental and very subtle replacements also function as a bewilderment – a slight but nagging confusion that is spread towards us as perceivers.

So what is it she does, that can actually be felt as a bewilderment and as a catalyst for new perspectives? At first sight it is not easy to grasp exactly what is embedded in the layers of Sibylle Eimermacher’s work – prints of surfaces of stones – but the confusion is exactly what is fruitful and productive. With the next glance, we see that these beautiful and diverse stone surfaces are not only – surfaces. Upon these pale, pastel-coloured, deep-greyish, rough or smooth, softened or multi-layered, but in all cases finite and impenetrable rocks, is an extra layer of folds. As if the heavy rocks had been folded like a thin piece of paper and then unfolded again. We see the traces of these folds – some as neat as a love letter carefully folded and kept close to the skin, others more spontaneous or as untidy as a piece of paper roughly crumpled and thrown away, and still others like unsuccessful attempts at origami gone awry. The heavy materiality of rock and all its historical connotations as the everlasting material of monuments and power are crumpled up in a single gesture. The monumental is made vulnerable, the eternal ephemeral. And here we are, left in bewilderment, because what should we now think?

Sibylle Eimermacher plays with art history and defined truths in more than one sense. Making rock into paper thus adding weightlessness, fragility and elusiveness to the heavy materiality of rock is also a way of “talking back” to art history by discussing terms and philosophical and existential subjects in an intertextual web of references and open discourses. The crystalline layer upon the materiality hints towards the crystalline utopias of Modernism, but in Sibylle Eimermacher’s case the crystalline is multifaceted: The heaviness of rock is a burden right underneath it, and the crystalline is revealed to be just a fragile scrap of paper – so easily blown away and dissolved. Sibylle Eimermacher’s Stone Foldings are both: They serve both as investigations of the materiality of things – the rocks – and as distillations of this heavy materiality into something pure and light. The crystalline has a backside that ties it to reality and prevents it from disappearing into nothingness and pure dreaming. Via the origami-like folds, she connects this materiality to mathematics, philosophy and spatial problematics. What is flat and what is voluminous? What is sealed off and what is deep and infinite? Similar to a geologist, Sibylle Eimermacher opens up the many – both material and metaphorical – layers of rock and plays with our defined perceptions of what stone and rock are. By embedding replacement, bewilderment, the irrational and ephemeral into the otherwise strict orders of mathematics, origami and geology – adding a bit of chaos to the hierarchy of rules – the Stone Foldings of Sibylle Eimermacher mark a place for us to rethink. When rock isn’t rock we have to reconsider our perception and being.

As in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl where things are never stable and static, but are always a priori in changing conditions with transcendental intersubjectivity and intertextuality that transcend the “sphere of ownness” and entrenched connotations about the stable nature of things and subjects, the work of Sibylle Eimermacher suggests a new perspective for us. The ephemeral, the illusion and the ambiguous all mark an openness, which encourages us to sense, experience and reflectively take part in the considerations and problematics Sibylle Eimermacher’s Stone Foldings subtly point towards.

Trondhjemite quarry, Follstad (Støren)

Soapstone quarry at Sandbekkdalen in Kvikneskogen

COLOPHON This publication was created following a working period at Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder (LKV), Trondheim, Norway Design Sibylle Eimermacher & Oscar Lourens Text Inger Marie Hahn Møller (MA in Art History) Photography Sibylle Eimermacher Print Drukkerij Tienkamp, Groningen Edition 500 Publisher Oscar Lourens Book Production ISBN 978-94-91609-07-7 Special thanks to Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder (LKV); Dag-Arve Forbergskog, Hè Marli Jayasekara, Kari Elise Mobeck Norges Geologiske Undersøkelse (NGU); Jan Cramer, Kari Grøsfjeld, Tom Heldal, Øystein Nordgulen, Arne Solli Mirjam Geelink Jeroen Glas Klaus Himmel & Petra Eimermacher Emi Kodama © 2015 Sibylle Eimermacher, Inger Marie Hahn Møller www.sibsite.eu