collage, collage

“You take different things, put them together and give them a unit form.”

To start the project, I had to find something to work with at the first meeting. I decided to bring a staple of black and white photocopies. If you wanna avoid the dilemma of dealing with a blank page, photos are an easy solution to get inspired right away.

So here we go, me and my toolbox on the way to Leipzig-Paunsdorf.

I left the familiar city centre and took the tram, to meet my first participant: Hannes Uhlenhaut. A sculptor, that works with porcelain, a material that I’d associate with my grandmas delicate figures and dishes.

The sculptures I find in Hannes’ atelier jump in my face. Renaissance look-alikes, such as something that reminds me of Michelangelos Moses, mingle with sharks and pastry decor.

The Collage technique seems to be something familiar to him. He says his plastics work like collages. You take different things, put them together and give them a unit form.

The photocopies I brought were pictures from magazines. I zoomed in until you could no longer see the whole picture and only structures were left, f.e. of fur, broken glass and stone.

“Coincidence always plays a role”

Hannes started drawing geographic forms on the backside of the paper and cut parts out. He combined the stencils with other photocopies in order to find interesting effects.

Coincidence always plays a role, he says. Sometimes it can give you a new idea how to work things, but in the end you will use it very consciously. Some artists paintings f.e. look like completely random, but they aren’t. Every little blur and freckle can be planned.

“Fetish always works”

After working with the paper for some time, Hannes decided to add some acrylic paint to his collages. Quickly, with a rush of energy, he created a row of six sketches.

Fetish always works, Hannes said and thought about combining a fragment with teeth on it with some fur. At the moment he is crazy about masks. Masks from all kind of cultures and times. He showed me the piece he was working on at the moment, a huge face made of clay. Parts of it he already covered with plaster in order to make a form.

It was relaxing to do something not related to his work, for a change, he summarized.