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JENS RISCH
09/12/2023
Two weeks after the last full blue moon — which, after all, was neither blue nor a supermoon, however made us stop and stare at the sky — and after this interview with Jens Risch, I can only think about another lunar becoming phenomena. This time, a super small full moon, which is being executed for a long time, even before the artist was born, in 1973, in Rudolstadt. The reader will understand if he chooses to stay with us until the end...or until tuning into The Eternal...
Jens Risch is a German artist, for a long time living in Berlin, whose work (also) tells us about that very slowness, greater than the movement of an entire individual life. As he mentions in this interview, he pursues The Eternal, which in Portuguese language carries across a tender sonority…E-ternal (= E-terno / terno = tender) — The same tenderness of knowing oneself in good hands, paradoxically, as a down-to-earth feeling rediscovered by the artist at Arrifana Promontory, in Portugal, this Summer. Perhaps, the same tenderness with which The Eternal guides his own hands…as “the process brings the result” — Behold the true safety and liberation possibility, forgotten by many of us. We might necessitate to tune into other temporalities...
Through his daily labor, i.e., The Knots-Making Craft, he discloses surprising already existing links between his microcosmos and The Macrocosmos. Still, how cosmic can easily become comic. Jens Risch has a powerful archival.
Everything is in everything. Yet, everything is a matter of cosmically playing with time and space scales…We have always been connected — There is such thing-less thing as a common place, no matter how commonplace it sounds.
This interview was made possible after a first visit to Jens Risch’s kitchen-studio, in his home in Berlin, where I was kindly received in late June 2023. We spoke in English, though we played around with possible translations into our native languages. Translations can imply ourselves into pertinent sense displacements; resume into forgotten orbits, and/or new considerations on what time truly is — Con sidere; i.e., (Latin = with sidereal) with the immense sidereal (s)pace tied into us. By chance, in Portuguese language we use the same word for us and knots. (=nós).
By Madalena Folgado
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MF: Your work is about knots — tricky affirmation in Portuguese language, considering the polysemy of the word knots, which means both knots and us (= nós).
When you have to tie yours or anyone else’s shoes, do you find yourself in any kind of neurotic process?
JR: No, it is just a functional knot.
MF: Let’s Biblically rise the tone of our conversation.
When I think about what you do — and because I was in your kitchen, i.e., your studio — I easily recall Jesus Christ's enigmatic response to Martha, sister of Lazarus and Mary of Bethany, when he finds her bustled about household duties, unlike her sister who chooses to just quietly listen to him:
Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed — or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. (Lucas 10:41-42).
You also managed to chose only 'one thing'; hopefully, ‘what is better’. Tell us a little about your Curriculum Vitae — Course of Life — and how, in its apparent linearity, the knots-making process emerged.
JR: In 1983 my mother wanted me to renew the string of a pearl necklace. I bought fishing line...stringed on bead by bead...and to close the necklace I tied a simple knot. But it did not hold. I made a second knot...a third... At the end it was a kind of chaotic cluster of knots.
Years later...out of boredom I tied knots on one of my hairs…The result was fascinating to me; it stimulated questions like “What is form?”, “What is work?”, “What is art?”, “What am I here for?” With these knots and questions, among other works I was doing by that time, I applied to the academy. My Professor, Thomas Bayrle, at Städel, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Frankfurt am Main, was very open-minded and supported my way.
In 1996 I realized a first piece of (cosmic not chaotic) knots; I tied as many knots as possible on a 100m jute string. Knots on hemp string (100m) followed. On October 2000 I started the realization of my first piece of silk thread (1000m). The change of magnitude (from 100m to 1000m and from string to thread) had major consequences.
The time factor suddenly became a central aspect of my work. To realize a silk piece (1000m) I have to tie knots for approximately 1500 working hours...That takes approximately a year and a half…This means that since 1983 until now the most part of my Curriculum Vitae is a “Knotting Path” tied with more than 25 knot pieces.
My pieces have travelled around Germany and Europe, through solo, duet and group exhibitions. Most recently, this year, to Fürth and Heilbronn; Blind Date with Batia Suter at kunst galerie fürth, Städtische Galerie; and, Kunst Stoff. Textil als künstlerisches Material, a group exhibition, at Kunsthalle Vogelmann, Städtische Museen Heilbronn.
Silk Piece VII, (1000m silk thread), 01/13/2017 — 06/29/2018 © Jens Risch's archive
MF: Unlike some of the main religions, in the art affairs one should escape duality — Good and Evil. However, as you know, you have a powerful religious artistic antagonist… What message would you leave to Our Lady Untier of Knots?
JR: Dear Lady, may I invite you to my kitchen for an espresso?
I would grind the fresh beans by hand…
I’m thinking Untier & Tier in German language.
(Untier = monster, brute).
(Tier = animal).
MF: …One by one…knots and beans…
…Still, both of you have some sort of ‘Virgo-like’ aspect in common, considering the more subterraneous Greek meaning for Virgo as ‘one with herself’ — The Untier & Tier diligently working as One.
Your work is beautifully saturated in Presence…Or, in infinite, as you somehow refer in the infinite fineness of the web of causality [1], also mentioning John Cage’s — in my opinion — greatest achievement. In this sense, Presence takes the place of Absence; the absence of “creative control of his art”, i.e., Presence becomes a true freedom experience. Can you please comment?
JR: Anthropocentrism, logic, control, exploitation...This is not all. I am more interested in alternatives.
Chance operations are a simple technique to open your mind. John Cage’s way to see the connections of the world is sympathetic to me. He created a playful diversity.
I am concentrated on just one project…two different approaches...but both with an attitude of “the process will bring the result”…and with the same goal: Getting in touch with the essence! One is in all and all is in One!
MF: You use many types and sizes of ropes, as much as a wide range of materials; from silk to fishing line, and, your own hair. The latter is used in two ways, it feels as if you’re playing with distances, by shortening, or, through an adding process, extending distances. One of this days you might turn a strand of hair into a (h)airline company…You already attempted to circumscribe Templhofer Airport…Please intertwine this double question: Is it different to work with a line that, literally, comes out of you, biologically paced? How far poetic can the process become?
JR: Yes, there is a difference between purchasing a material or producing the material yourself. It takes years to grow hair long. It is a bit about consciousness and responsibility.
Holism seems worth living to me. When I use my own hair, I use my DNA and those of my ancestors. I have stronger dark hairs coming from my mother...From my father’s side it is lighter hair and very rarely I do find a copper red one. This diversity helps me to understand where I am coming from...and that I am not an island. I am and everybody is connected to each other.
MF: I saw an image analogy between one of your pieces and a beach cliff at Algarve. Your piece resembled a rock, though in smaller scale — or was it vice versa? In general, do places influence your work, and specifically its inner (s)pace and/or scale?
JR: This Summer I was very impressed by the view from the Ruínas da Fortaleza de Arrifana over the Portuguese West Coast to the North...the continental dimensions of the massif land…the ensemble of rugged rocky points standing opposite creating perspectives into the far distance...That made me feel small and in good hands.
An other aspect of space is place...due to the fact that I am tying knots every day, my working environments are very various...In Summer time I try to work outside when ever possible...In Berlin our kitchen is my favorite workplace. Sometimes I have to work in a hotel room that can be tight...On the train or in the car I can not work because of the shaking…
But on the plane...It is really special to move with 900 kilometers per hour above the clouds and tie knots at the same time (18 centimeters per hour). When I look at my pieces I see a landscape of my life...filled with experienced time and emotions...tiny and huge at once.
I am particularly interested in the work of Batia Suter in terms of the way in which images are placed in relation to each others, evoking things without representing them; they’re the possible approximation to the Real (Lacanian real, hence, not reality). As in your work, there’s this inextricable, therefore, ineffable, quality that literally takes place; embodies the space, even if, in Batia’s case, it’s the space of a book, or between books. To me, who do image montage and also write, Batia’s images summon that very textuality, context or textile texture experience, where one becomes aware of the space between lines. They’re not one-dimensional, one can sense the attrition as much as the attraction between them — The magnetic field.
Your recent Blind Date, at kunst galerie fürth with Batia Suter made all sense(s) to me. It’s not about contemporary romantic dating…if not professional — i.e., preceded by a utilitarian process of collecting data, involving underground forms of artistic legitimization. To me, your rendezvous is really about an excess of seeing out of blindness. Please, tell us about this exhibition.
JR: I know Batia’s work from her Parallel Encyclopedia project. A serie of artist books with collected pictures from different sources and different contexts arranged into tableaus…just associative…after her intuition. Instantly I felt familiar with her view…I thought she is searching for the same thing, however, in a different way. Batia’s strategy is inclusive in relation to that very same thing. I rather try to exclude almost everything; I reduce my possibilities to a simple thread…Where can these different approaches touch one another? This question inspired me to invite Batia for a duet exhibition at kunst galerie fürth in Fürth, southern Germany, and she accepted. Intuitively, I thought this could be an interesting match.
The name of the exhibition was Blind Date because we never met before, and also because it was planned as an open scenario of new works. I made a large scale floor piece; my biggest work, a rope piece named Knotenzyklus (five ropes, each 100m).
Batia’s works dialogued with Knotenzyklus, at the gallery space: Near it there was this wall work, a sort of fragmented relief made with fruit discardable containers, collected from the market; and another wall work named Maxiscule, with prints of stars, galaxies and rotten fruits. Seeing this constellation for the first time made me feel really surprised about the diverse overlaps and echoes.
MF: A line can evoke many things and experiences…However, it takes discip-line. To reach you, one has to email you or have your home phone number; you don’t have a mobile phone — to some, having no smartphone, social media or being off-line equals not existing; which, paradoxically, forces some to face the ultimate existential knot.
Is your work an integrated disciplined positioning to face overstimulation; data prolix excess as distinct from an excess that emerges by means of art gift?
JR: You can see it like this if you want. I work as much as possible without any intentions...just execute what The Eternal played into me; inspires me to do. The Eternal is the only matter/ thing/ topic I am permanently interested in.
MF: It’s clear to me that you’re not creating ‘things to be seen’, rather…
[...] rare works which extend, as distinct from transposing, the experience of the spectator […] [such works] never remove appearances from the essential and specific body of meaning behind them. They never flay their objects. They deny the validity of any outside prize. (John Berger).
…Constrict with knots, it’s to me to extend within. Your work is about todos nós (= all of us). Thank you Jens.
What’s next, that is already eternally ongoing; in continuum?
JR: The day before yesterday I finished Piece11 (1000m cotton, sevenfold knotted, 06/17/2022 — 09/06/2023, 8 x 12 x 8 cm). Yesterday I started with Piece12 (same material).
Another ongoing project is a thread of silver hair (from my head)…One kilometer is the goal...at the moment I have almost 600m together. The final shape shall be a shiny sphere...like a little moon.
:::
Notes:
[1] Booklet conceived by Jens Risch, in conjunction with the group exihbition The Forces Behind the Forms. Geology, Matter and Process in Contemporary Art, 2016, (Jonathan Bragdon, Nina Canell, Julian Charrière, Olafur Eliasson, Ilana Halperin, Rogers Hiorns, Per Kirkeby, Katie Paterson, Giuseppe Pepone, Jens Risch & Guests, Hans Schabus, George Steinmann), that took place at Galerie im Taxispalais Insbruck, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Museen Haus Lange Haus Esters and Kunstmuseaum Thun.