Sarah Illenberger and the new perspective on ordinary things
Before we even meet Sarah Illenberger, she has a small request for us: collect different leaves and bring them to my studio. Of course we are happy to do that and, despite the trees already being sparse, we find whole bunches of leaves. I wonder what we’ll need them for?
Sarah greets us in a friendly manner and leads us into an anteroom of her studio, which is located in the courthouses in Wedding. Here we fortify ourselves and listen intently to Sarah. She tells us about her neighbours in the building complex -– many creative people and artists are among them, but also a soft ice cream manufacturer and even (fittingly) a company that makes toothpaste for chewing - and that she studied graphic design and illustration in London. But she is also an artist! She shows her work in exhibitions, in magazines, on the internet and occasionally in shop windows. For example, she had a meadow landscape with grasses, flowers and insects built out of metal, which she then placed in the window of a shop. It’s no surprise that nature is her greatest source of inspiration: she is the best artist, Sarah thinks. No one else can come up with such a variety of colours and shapes.
Sarah goes on to say that even as a child she was always making things and inventing stories. It still makes her happy to work with different materials and to make something with her hands. There are endless possibilities!
After the talk, Sarah takes us into her studio. There is so much to discover here! We stop in front of a shelf filled with many objects. We see a big shell with a telephone cable attached to it, a hairy apple, an axe whose blade is a cigarette packet, a whip made of black liquorice strings instead of leather or a knitted top made of barrier tape. And is that a mirror or a table tennis bat, a disco ball or a motorbike helmet? In her art, Sarah plays with objects, with materials and contrasts – and with irritation. With a saw, for example, you immediately think "Caution! Dangerous, do not touch! With Sarah’s saw, on the other hand, you want to stroke your fingers, because the saw blade is made of a soft feather.
Sometimes the objects stand on their own, but most of the time Sarah stages and photographs her works again in a very special way and puts them in the right light - because light is the most important thing in photography. She admits that she often has to help out a little with Photoshop and retouch helping hands or attachments (i.e. change them on the computer so that supporting toothpicks or threads disappear).
In the studio there are also many curtains with colourful doodles on them. She asks if we can imagine where they come from? For years, Sarah has taken the little pieces of paper from stationery shops where people have tried out pens. She scanned them all, reassembled them, enlarged them and printed them on fabric. It looks like an abstract painting – only none of the pen testers know that they have become part of a work of art. Here, too, Sarah changes things by looking at them in a new way - doodling becomes art.
And what is actually hidden behind the fabric panels? There is Sarah’s huge store of materials – each material has its own box. There are the stones, there the shells, here balloons, garlands and much more that she has collected. Sarah collects a lot of everyday things and always discovers something new in them. For example, she shows us a leaf she once found on the street in Paris. It looks like red lips.
With the sheets of paper we have brought with us, we are now to depict our own faces - just as many artists before us have portrayed themselves, albeit in very different styles. We tear, cut, fold, hew circles out of our leaves and think: What is typical for me? Do I make a triangular nose or a free form? Every little change and shift of the leaves changes the expression on our nature selfies.
At the end, Sarah gives us all a book with her work. We put our leaf faces between the pages, but without attaching them beforehand. Let's see how the expression changes during transport - we're sure to still have a big smile on our leaf lips!
