Rolf Hans, Waningo II, From the Poesie der Dinge Cycle

Rolf Hans
Frankfurt am Main 1938 - 1996 Basel
Waningo II, 1988
wood
Signed on the underside, dated and titled
Size incl. Socket: 38 x 16 x 12 cm

Including a catalog about the artist

Poetry of things
At the beginning of the 1970s, Rolf Hans begins with the design of objects for the first time. There are small sculptures, which he consumed from iron tubes with round or square profile. With them, he seeks to create a new, three-dimensional experience in parallel with his simultaneous paintings.
In 1987, Hans reappears the medium sculpture. The work process is now no longer considered to consciously construct it, but a guided manner. And as with his picturesque work, his objects are now emerging from an inner need not to fill an intellectual vacuum. This forced has been under control for decades and for a few years I try to pacify him with the cycle, poetry of things. The spiritual climate was prepared .
So Hans focuses on the work on the sculpture cycle in his last year of life. And as in the intoxication, he draws from the new possibilities, which offers him the design of the objects: The poetry of things grows, she swarms all time, much is neglected, barely letters, the journal is largely silent, concert attention is limited to essential . It creates a compulsion and has begun as a game, but attempts were always a serious thing that demand all the guy. [...] The objects have in my ratio, cautiously and unnoticed, claim their place, have taken him, are part of my own.
It's a difficult thing with the art, with a view of the predecessors you try to find the way, the time spirit and aesthetics influence the direction, you know if the dissatisfaction in which you move. Now, in the middle of the 'poetry of things' a sense of Freisin, nevertheless closely associated with much something before, there is no program, only a title of every work of freedom allowed.
But despite the role models in mind, Hans succeeds from the beginning with his object cycle to find very independent formulation options. What connects him with Max Ernst, Brancusi, Duchamp is only the starting material: Funds.
There are very banal things of everyday life - formerly needed, useful and practical such as tools, utensils, devices - which are relieved of their function and now serve the artist as a door to the imagination.
In this case, Hans undresses the things of their previous, traditional function or archaic determination and transports them into another, new reality to brave them back. He does not want to deny the found figure without being aestheticizing. Her, innate 'structure, signs of wear and color only slightly changing, he seeks to highlight their sense and purpose as a form and redefine their inherent broadcast.
Things are being edited, in combat with the artist to uncover their peculiarity and to make new statements in connection with other objects.
Thus, Hans without any artificiality presents the abstract symmetries of the wood and metal objects and placed them entirely the artistic tradition on a pedestal. In addition, he integrates this into the work. Because as the bottom component, the socket is not only preparing for the sculpture, but relaxes, triggers or strengthens its earth's connection. With this erection, he gives the sculptures a further own life, so to speak a second existence, and gives them a new identity with a new name. They show their personality, one more, another less, as so is in life, or in art. What is meant to them all, their work is from the past in this here and now. They reveal their original beauty and the mystical that inspires our imagination.
Through which ambivalent ways the sculptures and objects of Rolf Hans also meet us, they never do this loud or exalted. In their balanced and simple appearance they step quietly and quietly, but determining with us in contact. Alienating urgent urgently ask us to ask questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? They offer us no hints that could help us in answering. To do this, give us a greater scope for associations and imaginations. They appeal to our subconscious. They invite us to linger and for meditation: it is the general start and the unconscious break to the secrets of creation.