JULIA STEINER

JS: It happened intuitively, guided by the space, which already holds a strong identity of its own. Alongside Wogen (weite Fragen), I immediately thought of belonging (loop), a rope of felted sheep’s wool, emerged from a work I developed for the exhibition MoorArt at Seleger Moor Park earlier this year. There, a 300-meter-long rope, created over six months, stretches horizontally across the park, exposed to nature and weather for another six months. Here, the rope returns as a closed loop on the wall of the former stable, evoking something rural, slow, repetitive, a shifting line between black and white. The fragments share that quiet intensity. Their modest scale suits the domestic rhythm of the space, and like belonging (loop), they hold an attentiveness to gesture and trace. The ceramics from the daily turn series also felt right in this context, for the familiarity and domesticity in their aesthetic. I made them during the pandemic, a time mostly spent in my studio. I began creating pairs of bowls, glazing and fusing them together in the kiln. There’s a quiet playfulness in them, but they also evoke repetition and everyday ritual. Placed on the table, they belong to the world of lived things. The work consists of seven pieces, suggesting a kind of weekly rhythm, oscillating and playing between dark and bright, day and night, open and closed.