Yves Rasch – Denken in Holz
05.06. – 31.10.2012
back to overviewWir werden dazu verleitet, die Skulpturen von Yves Rasch abzutasten, sie zu berühren – die organischen Einschwingungen und Ausschwingungen mit den Händen nachzuvollziehen – oder wenigstens ersatzweise mit den Augen, solange die Skulpturen in der Galerie stehen!
Die sanften Rundungen, die Wölbungen und Kuhlen animieren uns, sie mit den Augen nachzufahren, das glatt polierte Holz zu streicheln wie einen bloßen Arm oder einen Kopf.
Diese Animierung unseres Körperempfindens bildet den ersten und direkten Zugang zu den Skulpturen, vor aller Interpretation und Ausdeutung.
Was dann ins Auge springt, ist die duale Form, die fast allen Skulpturen von Yves Rasch eigen ist – und ihre Dynamik.
Eine innere Bewegung, in der die Masse aufzusteigen scheint – empor zu wachsen, wie der Baum, aus dem das Holz stammt, aus dem die Skulptur gefertigt ist.
Und dann auch wieder nicht: Denn ein Baumstamm wächst, wenn er nicht gehindert wird, zielstrebig zum Licht empor, also gerade, während die Skulpturen in Windungen, Bögen ja Spiralen sich aufwärts schwingen oder drehen, dergestalt sich von der Schwerkraft befreiend.
Prof. Dr. Hubertus Gaßner
Speech at the vernissage of "Thinking in Wood" by Prof. Dr Hubertus Gaßner, 05.06.2014
I don't know who to congratulate more, Mr Wywiol for his idea and initiative to open a gallery in his company headquarters on the Alster, or Yves Rasch for being fortunate enough to inaugurate this new gallery with his exhibition.
I am sure that this gallery will enrich the art scene in Hamburg, not only because of its exposed location so close to the Kunsthalle and the Außenalster, with St. Georg and the Hotel Atlantik at its side, but also because of its programme and profile.
For according to the will of Mr Volkmar Wywiol, it will devote itself primarily to sculpture and sculpture, always keeping an eye on the artists in and around Hamburg.
This focus surprised me at first - the programmatic orientation of a gallery towards sculpture is rather unusual, especially in Germany. A gallery for sculpture and sculpture is a real desideratum that the Stern-Wywiol Gallery will now fill. Our special thanks go to Mr Wywiol for this.
I am probably not saying anything new for some of those gathered here when I point out that this special orientation of the gallery towards sculpture is not due to any economic calculation or speculation on a unique selling point, but to the desire of the now extremely successful businessman Wywiol to work the wood himself with hammer and chisel at a young age, in short: to become a sculptor himself.
It therefore stands to reason that now, as a globally operating businessman, he has fulfilled his childhood wish at least to the extent that he wants to gather young sculptors around him.
So it is not surprising that it was Mr Wywiol himself who chose the Hamburg sculptor Yves Rasch to open his gallery with his show: A programmatic choice: a young Hamburg sculptor who works in wood and bronze, and has been working as a freelance artist since 2002. He went to school with Erich Gerer as a sculptor from 2004 -2009 to perfect his craft skills.
Before today's monographic exhibition, Yves Rasch had already participated in numerous other exhibitions, such as
- at Reinbek Castle
- at the castle in Bad Bramstedt
- in Harburg and in Jesteburg.
But Yves Rasch has also been represented in exhibitions and at sculpture symposia in England and Denmark, in St. Blasien and in Berlin.
What do we see in this exhibition, which is the most extensive among those to date?
Sculptures first of all speak to us physically. As three-dimensional structures in space, they trigger physical sensations in us - when they touch us: internally, and when we want to touch them: externally, with our hands.
Yves Rasch's sculptures touch us in a special way because they speak the language of the body and therefore set our sensibilities vibrating: they find their resonance in our bodily sensations - as form and as material.
We are tempted to feel the sculptures, to touch them - to follow the organic vibrations and oscillations with our hands - or at least alternatively with our eyes, as long as the sculptures are in the gallery!
The gentle curves, the bulges and hollows animate us to trace them with our eyes, to caress the smoothly polished wood like a bare arm or a head.
This animation of our bodily senses forms the first and direct access to the sculptures, before all interpretation and interpretation.
What then catches the eye is the dual form that is inherent in almost all of Yves Rasch's sculptures - and their dynamism.
An inner movement in which the mass seems to rise - to grow upwards, like the tree from which the wood from which the sculpture is made comes.
And then again, not: for a tree trunk, if it is not hindered, grows purposefully upwards towards the light, i.e. straight, while the sculptures swing or turn upwards in twists, arcs and spirals, thus freeing themselves from gravity.
This is the one dualism we feel: from their base, the lowest point of the sculpture, the forms rise up, rising above the inherent weight of the material, mostly in curves that seem so flexible that the elasticity and elegance of the curves evoke admiration for the technical mastery that conjures them out of the hard material.
In this upsurge from her earthiness, which gives us a sense of expansiveness, freedom and vitality, the base of the sculpture branches out mostly into two arms, sometimes into two strands twice.
This is the second dualism we perceive.
In addition to the poles below and above, weighing heavily and rising slightly, the sculpture branches out to the right and to the left, stepping apart in a pair or double pair.
In some sculptures, the two arms wind into each other, spiralling - and rise up together.
In others, the arms grow parallel to each other, upwards in a U-shape - or better: like petals skywards and end in the most delicate tips, dematerialising the block of wood as it were.
In yet other sculptures, the limbs, initially striving apart, return to themselves: the image of union after a temporary separation:
Embrace in symmetrical embrace.
The wood yearns!
You notice that I use an anthropomorphic vocabulary, and indeed Yves Rasch's sculptures, with their inner movement and development of form between the poles below and above, right and left, have a strong correspondence to our own bodily experience, with the feet on the ground and the head aloft, with the arms right and left -a correspondence notwithstanding all the abstraction of form in the sculptures.
Of course, I am not claiming that these sculptures depict the human body - not at all; but they do transfer our sense of movement, our feeling of movement to the material.
This harmony with the sensation of our own body or with the physical sensation between two people, creates the resonance between the sculpture and me, gives Yves Rasch's sculptures a high emotionality that touches us, despite all the reduction and abstraction of the form.
The form is of course nothing without the material in which it is embodied.
Yves Rasch is first and foremost a wood sculptor, even though he has one or two of his sculptures recast in bronze. But this is a secondary process of moulding the original form.
First there is the inner image, for which the sculptor looks for a suitable piece of wood in which he can objectify his inner image.
A complicated, risky process - but also an exhilarating one in which the inner becomes the outer, in which the idea becomes matter.
Risky, because failure is easily implied if the wood is not worked in a way that is appropriate to the material - it cracks, it breaks apart and in two.
The centre of the sculptures is almost always empty, the core of the tree trunk removed. This is mainly for static reasons: Gutting the mass prevents the wood from cracking.
But this coring also gives rise - at least in part - to the form:
The swinging apart and into each other around an empty centre, which is enclosed and played around, and thus acts as a negative form just as much as the form of the material.
Between form and material as well as between contemplation and our own bodily sensation, the sculptures create a happy resonance that sets us vibrating and is therefore highly pleasing.
Prof. Dr. Hubertus Gaßner, 05.06.2012