CHRISTIANE LÖHR

Christiane Löhr works with organic materials. She gathers ivy seeds, plant stalks, tree blossoms, and horsehairs, for example, to arrange them into elaborate geometric constructs. Rather than manipulation or alteration, she understands her practice as an act of “ordering”. This entails the careful evaluation of the involved ingredients, their overall structure and physical characteristics, such as resistance and elasticity. When studied up close, these sculptures pay homage to the wealth and delicacy of detail found in nature. These objects of nature further engage in a dialogue with architecture, and seen outside their natural context and carefully installed in manmade spaces they gain an iconic presence and clarity. Though Löhr’s oeuvre shares aesthetic qualities with Minimalism and the Arte Povera movement, her exclusive focus on nature makes for a rather unique stance. “My sculptures all share something”, she explains. “This might be defined as a whole, which is made up of a number of individual elements that suddenly seem inseparable. I have the sense that the work process itself is strict, each work has its own logic and follows a vision of clear gesture and form that comes from within.” Meanwhile, Löhr’s works on paper expand on the exploration of light. Whereas the sculptures are meticulous and precise, these works embrace a more gestural quality. Abstract, yet reminiscent of plant structures, these are rendered in a strictly black and white or grey and white palette. They are concentrated analyses of the interplay between translucency and opacity, biomorphic form and geometric rhythm.

Löhr was born in Wiesbaden in 1965. She has exhibited extensively in Europe and Asia, including at the 49th Biennale di Venezia. She is a recipient of The Shifting Foundation Award (2018). Recent institutional solo exhibitions include at the Tony Cragg Foundation - Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden in Wuppertal, Germany (2018), Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland (2016) and the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum in Shizuoka, Japan (2015), and her solo exhibition at the Villa Panza in Varese, Italy (2010), was the last exhibition conceived by the acclaimed collector Giuseppe Panza. . Born in Wiesbaden in 1965, Löhr studied Egyptology, Archeology, Classics and History at the University of Bonn before enrolling at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she was a master student of Jannis Kounellis. She is based in Cologne, Germany and Prato, Italy.

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