Katharina Mörth is a passionate sculptor who forms up to life-sized sculptures from metal, wood, and stone. The artist works intuitive-ly. She understands her material and has developed over many years her own independent stylistic elements with anthropomorph and vegetative echoes. Does her method and sensitivity as a woman differ from that of a man? Likely so. Are her sculptures consequently less powerful? Did she wrest less tension and meaning from the mate-rial? No, on the contrary. It is impressive what harsh materials and great volumes the artist is able to handle physically while none of this exertion is visible in the finished work. With curved lines and smooth surfaces, cocoon-like objects, meshed structures and organic, heavenward branching, Mörth forms the material according to her ideas and wishes. Her work centres around the intrinsic nature of the material, exploring its boundaries, comprehending what strength, what expression it might harbour. "To me it's not about the efficiency of a sculptural technique", the artist says. "It's about feeling the immediate resistance of the material and finding forms as an expression of my thoughts." But is all that still in keeping with the times? Is this traditional artistic approach still valid in the multimedia world we live in?
In postmodern art, an exact definition of what a sculpture is often remains unclear. The traditional concept of it is a body forming work with the specific characteristics of three-dimensionality, positioning within a physical space, and being haptically experienceable. But in the zoth century, this concept is cracked open and critically expanded by artists. For centuries, sculptures were portrayals of the human anatomy. In the early zoth century, however, artists started to abandon the figural principle. This is a time when the process of abstraction set in, concreteness is cast out and crushed while sculptures become objects. The so-called "Readymades" come to mind, ordinary objects and industrial objects of utility are transterred into art and declared sculptures. The expansion of the sculptural concept, initiated in the 196os and 1970s by Joseph Beuys and Fluxus but also by art forms like conceptional art, minimal art and Arte Povera, created fundamentally difterent and in part completely new prerequisites for artists and brought with it a varied choice of materials and forms of expression. Artists now start to experiment with different material and aggregate states. They expand the traditional sculptural concept by the fourth dimension, time, and develop an interest in making visible the artistic process and the energies thereby at work. They engineer extensive multimedia installations or invite the audience with instructions to participate. Sometimes the objects become works of art only by being operated. With it comes a reflection on the artistic possibilities an autonomous sculptural work of art presents. The line between sculpture, action, and performance starts to blur. A sculpture can now also be a verbal utterance, a text or an instruction, a photo document or a social sculpture.
Mörth's artistic work is truly versatile. She also works as a painter, drawer, and photographer. Photos of individuals wrapped in linens are the starting point for developing her sculptural cocoons. Photography is used here less as an image than an abstraction. Apart from that, she also creates independent photographic works: pictures of in-dividuals, sitting or recumbent, naked or covered, with screen prints in red and blue hues applied on top of them. The artist often uses a soft focus and distortion to emphasise colour and surface, thus making the photographs reminiscent of paintings. It is no wonder these photos also serve as working tools and inspiration for experiments in painting. Sensual and vividly coloured are the light boxes that combine abstracted photographic motifs with delicate figurative drawings or, more recently, morph them with small sculptures. Nature studies become blurred with the lights of a nightly car park and coloured clouds are created. Animals and plants drawn on tracing paper are reminiscent of Japanese woodcuts. An exciting dialogue of different media, of line and surface, of two- and three-dimensionality, of light and shadow. Pictures with high sensual suggestion and auratic effect.
