Shelter, 2022

Sculpture, Bamboo, Hemp rope

This is beautifully evident in what is probably the most striking work in the exhibition, the bamboo pole object “Shelter” by Barbara Karsch-Chaieb. The gigantic, almost crystalline wedged frame, darkly reminiscent of the construction of a shelter, seems to have grown out of its two smaller counterparts. It is a form with which Karsch-Chaieb has been experimenting for several years and which now confronts us here in space-filling conciseness. This object is inspired by the geometric apeirogon, a polygon with an infinite, yet countable number of sides. This sounds wonderfully contradictory. Especially since the object, a vague globe shape as a whole, consists in detail of countless straight lines. Molecule-like, one could almost say, a world framework thus in the figurative sense, the blow-up of an ideal elementary particle, which gives us one thing here on the spot: countless different views. It’s almost like real life: Every step a new view, every observer a different perspective. The term apeirogon, by the way, comes from the ancient Greek apeiron – the unlimited, the indivisible. And to close the circle for now, in Greek philosophy apeiron stands for the legendary ether, the origin from which the four elements crystallized, so to speak. It is a small component of our world and the great indivisible in one form, gently various worldview’s rub against each other in harmonious contradiction. This worldly construct, however, lashed together from sustainable bamboo and hemp fibers, seems so delicately balanced, so fragile, that one is forced to ask oneself whether it can really be a shelter for us or whether it does not rather need protection itself.

With many thanks to the Ministery for Science, research and art for the support of the sculpture Shelter.

Dimensions flexible, in the Gedok-Galerie: 500 x 200 x 250 cm
Photo Credits: Ulrike Reichart