Steirischer Herbst 2004 �Erben erobern�  

Verlorene Orte-gefundene und verdichtete Zeit
Lost Places-Found and Condensed Time
Lore Heuermann

Im Fluss - Klanginstallation zur Arbeit von Lore Heuermann
Flowing - Sound Installation by the Works of Lore Heuermann
Gerhard Nierhaus


Birgit Schwaner:

"Lost Places " Found and Condensed Time" is the title of Lore Heuermann"s contribution. If you enter the hall, to your right you can see the lond paper rolls which were laid out by the artist. Pieces of a path, traces. Vulnerable. You should only enter and follow them with your eyes. There are so many directions from which you can view and read them. From top to bottom, from bottom to top,from right to left, from left to right or erratically" Lore Heuermann does not only focus on Asian philosophy, but also on the topic of "motion and movement". Dance. Fading, passing of time becomes visible if a body moves. Also sensations, feelings, the mental state of a person " our inner thoughts and feelings are visualised by the way we move. The human body and its movement can be interpreted as a reflection of mind. And at the same time in a more comprehensive sense as bearer of cultural features, imprints. Handed down and inherited gestures" Considerations like these have inspired Lore Heuermann"s movement studies for many years. Usually she studies the movements of dancers or actors " experts of "body language".

As if exploring a strange language, taking it down with Chinese ink, translated into characters, the artist covers long rolls of paper with series of figures, which could be called calligraphy because they seem to be letters and symbols at the same time. They become readable as abstracted bodies. Black and white: crouching, squatting, dancing, standing, walking, running figures, painted with only a few strokes. Sometimes they are repeated and can hardly be distinguished. An expression of the movement of the artist, of the way she held and applied the brush, they become a hermetical text, telling about the obviousness of the solution to the mystery of man " visible every day, never completely perceivable, always changing and still remaining the same.

The paper rolls end at an office in the corner of the hall, separated by two extra walls. Outside on the sides, close to the ceiling, Lore Heuermann fixed more paper rolls, which are mounted vertically. In the office there are five tent"like objects " painted paper canvases on metal racks. The broadsides are wide open. The inside is illuminated. The "figures" on the outsides are smaller, painted with a finer brush, they seem to be "farther away" than those on the inner sides, which are larger, more expressive and painted with a broad brush, in strong, black strokes. Dark, silhouettes, drawing nearer, glimmering through the canvas " memories, shadows of the past; or something completely different? Four tents point towards a single one. Preliminary housings, possibly the only homes people have. Nomads of existence, even when building stone houses, shelters and palaces." We inherit our history " only for a very short time, however, we are wanderers and conquerors in the different times of our planet", writes the artist. Movement also means losing a place.

In reaction to this work the composer Gerhard Nierhaus created his congenial sound installation "Flowing" with a computer programme where "melodies are always in search of new paths like in a labyrinth".