Simone Stoll » Profile

Location

Region

Germany

City

Frankfurt/Main

Profile

Website

http://www.simonestoll.com

Personal Statement

Body

Finding shapes that convey the conception of life, like a cell with its membrane, its transitions and its fragility. That was the initial idea of softbodies some years ago. They grew from a single shape into two, parted or melted into one another. Lines define inner and outer. Fluid gives mass and free flow.

In microscopy one discovers bodies in layers, versions, surfaces become visible or blur into the mass. I felt a need to come closer to that invented body. They became blotchy and hairy, grew from slices to full bodies. The hair builds a fur-like cover and protects, but the hair is an attractor at the same time, tentacles caressing the air, a promise to caress.

Maybe those shapes needed to be given birth. Maybe body and life cannot be separated from sexuality. My intimate understanding can only be that of a woman. Sensuality can only be based on my own experience. I had to mentally open door after door to connect and accept that fragility, to be able then, to translate. The labia-like shapes evoke sensual pleasure and voluptuousness. They stand for the fragile, vulnerable ‘body’, the hidden secret of an identity. The fine hair grows out of those shapes; it is like nerves lying open.

This work somehow seems to build up on my early research on the figure. I had started with paintings of naked female bodies, strong in their way, to express their pleasure and pain. Young women in urban environments discovering life, screaming out their energy. I consider those paintings as some of the purest and most honest in their direct and simple approach. That innocence was certainly lost within the apprenticeship of becoming an artist.

Living in different countries is an enormous, eye-opening and fulfilling experience. It taught me languages in the broadest sense. It taught me seeing and thinking in all kinds of ways. Every place seems to have its own rules and heroes disregarding the unknown. Adaptation is a learning process going from shovelling in of the new and burying of the old until the latter seeps back through and asks to be reconsidered.

So it seems, after processes of transformation and reconsideration, I return to body and female sensuality. My work has always been based on life and the human. As I had moved out of the big cities of Berlin and London, the human became more existential and lonely in ‘empty’ spaces of colour fields. Outlines of human figures flit across horizontal spaces. Later, the human figure gained in fleshiness but nonetheless dissolved in the space around.

softbodies-extra are the interim results of a search for sensuality and self-awareness. The human is seen as it may be, raw and fragile, given a shape inspired by the female sex. Hair is considered imperfection on the female body. Women’s bodies are meant to be child-like and ageing of flesh and skin fills women with fear and shame.

The feminine sexual and sensual connotation in the work is evident and dominates over a pure anatomical view. The woman, unlike the man, does rarely see her organs, it demands not only the effort, but also the intellectual approach to do so. I think, to many women, the internalized image of the self is much stronger and more precise than anatomical realities.

What may have started as a life questioning and later a narcissistic pleasure taking, self-mirroring, turned into the search for the opening of body and inevitably of the mind. This demands truthful contact to the self, penetrating consciousness and longings; staying balanced on a tightrope. All drawings are born out of a special moment of concentration. They offer themselves to the viewer; centred and intense.

Body opens, receives, gives way to inner. I seek to create images of this state of being receptive, of the consciousness of the inner and the outer body, of the flow of giving and taking. Being receptive to the other that is nonetheless absent in the work. The other exists through the longing expressed by the one body; it may be subconsciously present, projected or imagined, but it is never given shape.

Comprehension of the physical body is intertwined with mental equilibrium. I had to unpeel layers of self-protection and defeat self-denial. New boundaries had to be defined. I seek to unveil and find images of mental and physical, vulnerability, of female identity and sensuality. softbodies are like minds conscious of their state of being, able to confront, to transform; strong enough to admit fragility, to receive and to give, despite all.

Simone Stoll

body has been written for the publication simone stoll-softbodies-extra, edition 'La fabrique sensible', 2006, 32 pages color, Engl/French. Contact the artist for more information.

Artists statement Simone Stoll 2005

Equilibrium in biological systems is achieved only by the continuous balancing of opposite forces. Frequently it is maintained homeostatically, by continuous small adjustments to a dynamic system. At other times, its achievements depends on profound alterations of the system occurring at intervals, cyclically or sporadically.1

Equilibrium in body and mind and unbalanced states of body and mind are focus points of my research, whether in painting and drawing or installations (in collaboration with the French artist Hervé Nahon). Within the last four years I have concentrated more and more on drawing, but have kept the duality of body and mind.

Profound alterations of “self” and consciousness… one gets an overwhelming impression of the absolute identity of Body and Mind, and the fact that our highest functions - consciousness and self – are not entities, self-sufficient, “above” the body, but neuropsychological constructs – processes - depending on the continuity of bodily experience and its integration. 2

Psychological and neuropsychological comprehension has influenced all of my work. In 2001, I was artist-in-residence in Berlin with the academy of arts and the Max-Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine Berlin-Buch, in particular with a research lab in neuroscience working on brain cells. At that time I began to work on the series Live Kinetic Profiles (approx. 12 cm x 13 cm) and the Big Live Kinetic Profiles (88 cm x 101 cm ). The title refers to a scientific term for the representation of an experimentation. These drawings are a poetical translation of tension, equilibrium and dysfunctional system.

Chemical changes in the cells were represented through graphs in different scales, for example in the microscopic work, the scaling up of the graph changes the image, turns a straight line into ‘nervous’ ups and downs or reveals little outbursts. It all depends on the representation; every single can only be one part of a multitude of possibilities, one interpretation.

These drawings are like the tracing of psychological tension often expressed in physical, muscular tension. Each instant of mental in-stability finds its translation in one line, the drawing as a whole is the accumulation of several instants. Some regular physical activities like breathing are related to the mental state. Each trace, each act of tracing slowly and regularly a vertical line is like one breath taken, thus easily brought out of balance by mental changes. Rhythmic repetition of the same movement becomes a physical and mental act.

The fragility of human, the impossibility of perfection, absolute regularity and predictability.

One part of that series is in charcoal on humidified paper; the other is black ink on paper. I sought a way to combine the dry and powdery charcoal with fluidity. The charcoal line can be directed and controlled, the humidified paper adds free flow of the matter.
The visual vibration caused by the strong black and white contrast of the latest ink drawings, translates again more a state of mental being than optical effects. Troubled vision is part of mental instability; is one moment mind becoming body.

Parallel to those line drawings, I have developed a series of color ink drawings on physical and biological presence of life, the series Softbodies ( 24 cm x 30 cm and 30cm x 40 cm). The first part of that series concentrates on defining a shape that conveys the general idea of cell, organ and body. First I focused on a single shape, or shapes dividing into two. The later work shows groups of shapes overlapping or growing from one into the other. The whole series has evolved from the pure concept to a more complex and sensual comprehension of body.

The line defines a form, whereas the fluid gives body to it. The fluid may or may not be restrained by the outline that can be seen as a skin or more precisely as a membrane. The membrane, permeable or semi-permeable, envelops the “body” thus creating internal and external (just like intra-cellular or extra-cellular). It filters all exchange between inside and outside. These simplified images of cellular shapes become image of body and life, of the fragility of life and of life in transition.

The latest part of that series, the softbodies-extra, gains in detail and depth, in color and density. The horizontal format of the early series is now changed into a square format (25 cm x 25cm, 30cm x 30cm or 40 cm x 40cm ) concentrating on the central shapes. That change of format gives also an impression of enlargement, almost penetrating the surface. The detailed and “hairy” aspect adds the notion of close observation (e.g. microscopic) and also, of sensuousness and fragility. It is protection, as well as attraction. They are a very personal and poetical translation of sensitivity and sensing of body.

1 “Migraine” by Oliver Sacks, page 133, edition Picador 1995

2 see above page 98

History

Member for

4 years 15 weeks