Anna Lena Grau "Halbzeug"

Salt licks in the chess opening, jellyfish works in laminate, and other choreographies of form-making. Anna Lena Grau, 32, an artist from Hamburg, presents “Halbzeug,” a willful power play, at the Thomas Rehbein Gallery from January 11 to February 23.

In Anna Lena Grau's art, the process of exploring materials, finding forms, and arranging them is just as crucial as the meaning and beauty of each individual object. In a traditional glassblowing workshop, Grau transformed classic wine glass shapes into a playful bubble game or organic forms, paying homage to the wonders created by the Blaschka glassblowing family. The mouth-blown glass vessels, nested within one another, are combined into fragile, organic sculptures. Some are displayed on baroque wooden consoles, taking on the challenge of opening the space between art and the natural sciences, much like pieces in a cabinet of curiosities. The glass objects evoke images of X-rayed Matryoshka dolls or a runaway Möbius strip. In her new work cycle “Medusa,” the natural wonder of the jellyfish, with its veil-like “non-body,” serves as a wonderful muse. Delicate color formations float in a series of object images on the wall. Colorful and inexplicably elegant, the plastic bags frozen in laminate are transformed into constructivist abstractions. The vibrant descendants of Duchamp's Great Glass radiate calmly from the wall, serving as an unpretentious, abstract pop visual feast.

Plastic bags, salt licks, plant branches. Sometimes, a simple touch, a shadow cast, or a new constellation seems enough to release the peculiarities of shapes and colors. Salt stones licked by cow tongues, mineral blocks for the dietary supplement of grazing animals, lie in the chess opening “The Modern Variant” on the black-and-white board. The surfaces of the abstract sculptures shift from milky delicate to coarsely speckled as the minerals are pushed outward in a chemical process. This group of “natural” objects opens up a new game of variations. However, regular moves are undermined here. One would like to locate the white queen, but a sculpture has no role pattern, does it?

“Halbzeug” is the title of the exhibition, a term from the raw materials industry. It traditionally refers to a family of standardized, industrially pre-produced components that are provided for processing into a final product.

Classics in this context would be a car or a refrigerator. One of the oldest such functional forms is highlighted as “Uluburun.” Instead of the valuable trading raw material copper, the artist has poured countless colorful and varied plastic scraps into the attractive intermediate form known as oxhide ingots. Labeled for further processing, the purchase certificate reads “Grauschen Barren.” The release of the artistic form is both a critical and playful act, passing the ball to everyone—foremost to the art buyer.

But beware, it takes a fine sense to create living forms.

(Franziska Glozer, December 2012)