“Little kitchen girl,” said the Lord-in-Waiting, “I’ll have you appointed scullion for life. I’ll even get permission for you to watch the Emperor dine, if you’ll take us to the nightingale who is commanded to appear at court this evening.”
[Excerpt from “The Nightingale” by Hans Christian Andersen, 1843]
INTRO – THE IMMIGRANT
Originally European, having previously lived, studied, and worked in many other countries (a.o. Germany, Thailand, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, UK), I consider myself on a very long artist residency in USA. I had entered this country initially on a study exchange through Edinburgh College of Art just after 9/11 in 2002 with the intention to research a complex and exotic culture for a limited term of 3 months, that at that time just after 9/11 experienced an acute crisis. Two decades later, USA has always been in a stage of acute crisis for one reason or another, the core reasons all seemingly connected.
One will never learn more about oneself and the world one is living in than in a moment of crisis, because then established illusions fall away, one is forced to improvise, make radical choices, develop courage, and will much faster unmask the true character of people both around oneself and back home.
Finally in 2021 I had intended to leave USA for good, but in early summer was very unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer, consequently my American long-term art residency is still going on. The work on this site until recently has been the work of a 21st century immigrant in USA, and now is the work of a person with cancer; these are my strongest impacts that direct my experiences and perspectives.
WHAT IS REAL?
I work interdisciplinary with various media and processes, choosing materials and techniques that serve me best realizing what I want to create, never for the sake of producing “a piece” of art in a specific medium or technique. Despite this, to achieve a simple structure on this particular platform, I have divided the work on this website into the categories: 3D Clay, Moving Image Art, Photography, Drawing, and lately again Painting, which are currently the main materials and processes I turn to in order to manifest my research, but they cross-fertilize and overlap each other, and so my work is always “in progress” and changing.
As a visual artist, I am making use of the exclusively human ability (and at the same time obsession) to communicate by recreating one’s environment in visual images which serve as surrogates in man-made pseudo-realities. This is based on re-cognition, which in contemporary society to the greatest percentage concerns the human visual sense, visual memory, and visual association. Since 2012 I developed various projects investigating which factors have to be met for a human audience to recognize a man-made image as a substitute for its original. There exists a certain contradiction documenting 3d objects in 2d photographs, which has become the main fashion for illumination in the 21st century.
One aspect of particular interest to me is the question “what is real?” since the growing communication through the internet, in particular through social media platforms, where what in pre-internet times used to be known as “reality”, which then was upon direct investigation fairly easily identifiable, can now be exchanged with a different reality that exists only online and only comes into this existence through its publication on the internet. Through lens-based documentation of an object, person, or situation, the depicted 3d item can be exchanged with its 2d image, which apparently deletes the difference between original and a picture of it. Where two such definitions of one item, for example a clay object, exist, the virtual 2d version seems often even to override the 3d original. Consequently the human memory is now to a great part informed by indirect, second-hand experiences, but we are unaware of this. I am experimenting with this question, and am intrigued how easily we can be fooled, seemingly because we desire to be fooled. I am wondering to what extent we lose out on a potentially more appropriate life experience if by concentrating exclusively on our visual senses we are neglecting all other options we could integrate.
Over time I have come to experience a great need to make work that is both tangible and also vice versa communicates an essence of touch, because this kind of work has enabled me to create a space for myself that provides me with tremendous comfort, happiness, and endless inspiration, that is invaluable. Since my recent cancer diagnosis I have become more focused and also more assertive, where in the past I had been looking for slots I could make myself fit in I am now listening to my inside engaged in a much more intimate dialogue; the result is both surprising to me as well as deeply joyful, because I am beginning to feel very free.
“I am interested only in the unknown and I work for my own astonishment.”
[Roberto Matta]
“I am interested only in the unknown and I work for my own astonishment.”
[Roberto Matta]
Josiane Keller “Viola on the beach 4” (2016)
Josiane Keller “twig with dew drops” stoneware, underglaze, glaze (2018)
In memoriam to my grandfather Walter Overmann (*15.07.1902 – †07.09.1983), resistance fighter in Nazi Germany, instrument builder, mountaineer, and artist.
Don’t become a pushover.
Passau ist überall. [* also much awe for Sigi Zimmerschied. If you don’t know what “Passau” is, it loosely translates to “South Park”.]
また、日本の皆様に心より感謝致します。私は皆さんから沢山の事を学びました。
JK, Jul. 2021