light, dark – Henriette Lempp – ceramics

The exhibition comprises three installations (two on the floor and one on the wall). Taken together, they embody material (ceramic), colour (black, white, greys) and technique (smoke firing). The colour merely provides the background while the object is reduced to the very essence – from light to dark, from white to black, through all the shades of grey. The final effect of smoke firing can be influenced only to a certain degree. It is the fire that leaves unpredictable patterns on the ceramic.

Gifts of the Night: some 800 single capsules – each unique despite certain similarity, diverse in colour, specifically in the shade of gray, with surfaces ranging from matt and rumpled to shiny glazing, differing in size, form and impression. What stems from ascription is an order of structures (Dividuelle after Paul Klee), a community of individuality.

Bone Shadows: 30 impressions of bones painted on clay tablets, conspicuous against the blackened background through the ‘naked raku’ technique. We are dealing here with a revelation of complicated structures that we carry in ourselves. The interchangeable arrangement of square tiles and empty spaces produces an incomplete jigsaw puzzle.

So Much Life: about 100 vessels – identical in form, different in colour. Each contains one or two dates – of birth and, sometimes, of death. Each is ascribed to a member of the family, 7 generations in all. The volume of each vessel is the same, irrespective of the length of life or the degree to which it is a fulfilled one.

Henriette Lempp was born in 1956 in Tübingen; originally schooled in photography, she subsequently studied ceramics in Norway and France. Clay has been her material of choice for over thirty years in a variety of activities – in creating utilitarian ceramic wares, in her work as an artist and as a teacher. Irrespective of her interest in various art forms and the diversity of materials used to make them, the artist finds clay the most fascinating and inspiring – its sensoriality and purposefulness

In 1981 Henriette Lempp set up her own ceramic workshop, where she has been making and selling her works. In 1988 she started teaching courses and seminars for children and adults. She continued her education in Handicraft Design at the Technische Akademie Schwäbisch Gmünd (1990–1993) and in Art at the Freie Kunsthochschule in Nürtingen (1998–2002).

At present, she teaches at the University of Tübingen’s Institute of Drawing, is a member of the Examination Board of the Ulm Chamber of Handicrafts and of the Württemberg Association of Professional Artists (VBKW). She takes part in exhibitions at home and abroad.

an exhibition which is not – Elżbieta Lempp – photography
When Reality ...
(2 series of accidental art)
These photographs should not be. A roll of 35mm film has 36 frames.
Numbered 1 through 36. Images sometimes appear at 0, sometimes at 00 (Kodak’s "0" corresponds to "S" in Fuji films). Out of the nearly 2000 negatives in my archive, which I have kept since 1983, I have selected 60 photographs.

Those from the opening frames of a roll of film form the series 0A, When Reality Enters the Frame. Because, here, reality literally enters it: a portion of the image has remained outside the frame and what is there has produced a fully-fledged picture despite the fact that it came into being before entering frame 1 in the roll. A roll ends in frame 36. Sometimes 36A, sometimes 37; 38 in an Ilford (Fuji marks this position with the letter "E").

With those closing frames you can never be sure how much of the photographed world will be retained in the shot. I have named this series 36A, When Reality Should Not Be Here. You could say that the photographs in both series are accidental art.

Elżbieta Lempp was born in 1957 in Będzin; studied Slavic Philology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Between 1984 and 1986, she taught Slavic languages – Russian, Polish and Serb-Croat – at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Her interest in photography dates back to that period. Since her first exhibition in 1986 at Chapel Hill, she has had nearly 50 solo shows and taken part in 15 group exhibits. The most recent one, entitled Art in the Can. Resoc, comprised photographs from her 14 trips to penitentiary institutions in Poland and Switzerland (2010–2012).

Most of her works, however, are black-and-white portraits of people involved in cultural activities, especially writers, who are for example the subject of her photo album Literary Landscapes. Photography 1985–2007 (afterword by Marek Bieńczyk; Kraków: Universitas, 2009). Elżbieta Lempp’s work, which she herself refers to as ‘narrative photography’, has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers at home and abroad. The artist has worked with a number of publishing houses; the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Book Institute use her portraits on their websites, www.culture.pl and www.instytutksiazki.pl.

Moreover, photographs by Elżbieta Lempp have been featured in such art books as Rozbiórka (text by Magdalena Rybak; Wrocław: Biuro Literackie, 2007) or Wielka ciekawość (text by Anna Nasiłowska; Olszanica: BoSz, 2006).

Recent exhibitions:
Art in the Can. Resoc – Warsaw (2012), Wrocław, Racibórz, Katowice (2013)
Literary Landscapes – Prague (2010), Kraków (2013)
Miłosz. Places of Residence – Rome, Venice, Florence, Moscow (2011)
fotoNarracja – Łódź, Warsaw, Nuremberg (2010)