Sybille Hotz
STICHES
November 8, 2008 – December 24, 2008
The stitched drawings on the 16 and 30 page cloths are optically separated by dashed lines and can be read like a book, not only from left to right, row for row, but also diagonally and vertically. Thus created are somewhat different combination and association chains to those originally intended in the resulting encyclopaedias. Based on the concept of the first art collections that, like a chamber of curiosities, reflected the personal preferences and the Weltanschauung of its owner, Sybille Hotz disregards scientific perspectives and systems in her work.
The artist’s interest in medical and technical manuals is repeated in the motifs of her work. The ‘Handgriffe’, ‘To Hide and Vanish’, ‘Vanishing’ or ‘Körperobjekte’ series of works are primarily composed of images of the human body in a state of illness or injury. Initially seen as technical views of organs, they then emerge as interior views of the human form. Abstract patterns, recognisable as cellular structures, are brought to the body’s surface and allow a view of the innermost.
That which keeps a human together or threatens it is thus turned outwards. In Sybille Hotz’s ‘Cut Outs’, the textile’s surface appears as a pattern of our existence equal to votive-like building plans of viruses, bacteria, muscle fibres and cells on the 16 and 30 page cloths. Sybille Hotz examines the human and it’s being in a purely formal manner and with an aesthetic eye. The loose woollen fibres that hang from the image’s surface strengthen the character of an embroidery pattern on the one hand side and suggests the unperfected and incomplete potential which forms the basis of the figures on the other.
The artist’s interest in medical and technical manuals is repeated in the motifs of her work. The ‘Handgriffe’, ‘To Hide and Vanish’, ‘Vanishing’ or ‘Körperobjekte’ series of works are primarily composed of images of the human body in a state of illness or injury. Initially seen as technical views of organs, they then emerge as interior views of the human form. Abstract patterns, recognisable as cellular structures, are brought to the body’s surface and allow a view of the innermost.
That which keeps a human together or threatens it is thus turned outwards. In Sybille Hotz’s ‘Cut Outs’, the textile’s surface appears as a pattern of our existence equal to votive-like building plans of viruses, bacteria, muscle fibres and cells on the 16 and 30 page cloths. Sybille Hotz examines the human and it’s being in a purely formal manner and with an aesthetic eye. The loose woollen fibres that hang from the image’s surface strengthen the character of an embroidery pattern on the one hand side and suggests the unperfected and incomplete potential which forms the basis of the figures on the other.
