Caught between adventure and security, between the everyday and the extreme, between things and letting go, Elisabeth Oertel elevates the depth and madness of objects and life to a surface.

The sculpture “594 km,” drawn from glass threads like an action painting, is a living structure. It addresses decay, un-archivability, and the moment in equal measure. With each additional kilometer that the sculpture travels during transport, its title changes to include the added kilometers of the transport route. Each time it is awakened from its slumber in a storage room and prepared for viewing, its appearance changes. Stretch by stretch, construction by construction, it continues to degrade. Elisabeth Oertel pushes the material glass to the limit of its resilience in order to stretch and make tangible the everyday moment in which an object, a thing, is ‘consumed.’

This overcoming of materiality is also reflected in the dangerous game with the sculptures from the series ‘Assumed Biomorphism and Other Coincidences in my Room’: traditionally colored and mouth-blown panes of antique glass stand adventurously on high stilts and carry amorphous glass objects, as if entering into a daring alliance with gravity. A moment of carelessness would be enough to bring the base, along with the glass objects placed on it, crashing down. Lisa Bensel