Anna Lena Grau - from swerve of shore to bend of bay

Anna Lena Grau is not concerned with clarity. Her works impress with the vast space of associations they open up. In her pieces, multiple layers of meaning intertwine, overlap, and combine to reflect on perception, making the complexity and ambivalence of things visible. Within this web of meaning, the gaze is continually directed toward new surfaces, causing the notion of the actual object to dissolve and making the complexity of one’s own perception tangible.

Anna Lena Grau’s works invite us to embrace irritations about the familiar. They capture moments, the fleeting, the elusive edges of all things, which she attempts to preserve in her art. Each piece is grounded in a precise observation of an object and a meticulous examination from various angles. However, her approach is not conceptual. It is an open, experimental method that allows for a plurality of perspectives on the same subject.

At the same time, her works reflect the process of forming. Intermediate stages, transitions, and transformations manifest in the chosen materials. The artist operates in the tension between control and letting things emerge, consistently relying on the element of chance to initiate processes and provoke specific effects.

Variations of white plaster bandages swing in different directions within the individual cubes of a static grid structure. They were loosely hung into the segments while still wet, with the geometric sculpture being rotated to a different base after each plaster bandage had hardened. In this way, Anna Lena Grau manages to capture various snapshots of gravity. The grid structure is borrowed from Sol LeWitt’s Open Geometric Structure 2-2,1-1 (1991), which here undergoes a transformation into an Open Gravity Structure.

In the series of Phoenix and Circle drawings, the artist only exerts influence at the beginning. After creating an ink drawing, she applies water to the image, causing the colors to run into each other. This uncontrollable factor creates structures that produce different effects with various visual impacts.

Her latest work, Weltenschale, features a circular folding structure composed of individual cast fragments from a lost form. The round, opulent, plastic shape immediately evokes associations with decorative stucco work. Although the cast fragments refer to a similar manufacturing process, the deep grooves and bulges suggest a natural erosion of rock by water. Deep gorges carve through exposed mountains. Or are they wave crests that make the object appear as if its deformation process could continue indefinitely?

(Miriam Walgate, 2016)