Essay: Reiner Mährlein

Variation IV, 2006

Steel and granite embossing, 1/1

19 x 12 in.

$ 675

REINER MÄHRLEIN

By Wim Roefs

Reiner Mährlein mostly uses steel, granite and paper, the first two for his sculptures, all three for his prints. From these basic, somewhat raw materials, he makes smart, elegant, beautiful works of art. Interaction between mass and openness, weight and lightness, flatness and three-dimensional space and organic and constructed qualities characterizes much of his work. “These materials and the relationship between them,” Mährlein says, “create spatial tension -- a contest, as it were, between conflict and togetherness.”

“In many of my sculptures, the interaction between the three-dimensional objects made from welded flat steel plates and the stones’ mass creates varying spatial and architectural environments.” Little Cube III and IV in the current exhibition are small-scale models of such sculptures, many of which Mährlein has turned into large public sculptures in Germany. “In these situations,” Mährlein says, “the steel plates, because of their particular properties, keep their flat-surface qualities, which is accentuated by the linear, often frame-like patterns of the welded seams. The stone mass, on the other hand, with its rough surface and relief structure, always intervenes in the space.”

In his small, all-bronze cubes such as Inside II and IV, Mährlein maintains the interaction between mass and openness and heaviness and lightness, but the weight shifts. Instead of a solid piece of stone intervening in the center space of a steel construction, thin sheets or fluttering flakes of bronze occupy the sculptures’ airy center. Almost by default, the legs and bars making up the cubes’ external skeletal structure gain in weight.

In Blues and Pfluge (Plough), two larger sculptures that Mährlein created in Columbia in 2003, the flatness of steel plates is missing. Instead, beams represent the steel element, not creating space for granite to intervene in but itself intervening in space with the granite. “I worked with whatever materials I had,” Mährlein says, “and adjusted my concept while still working with granite and steel.”

In many of Mährlein’s sculptures, granite typically provides the solid, heavy mass. In his prints, on the other hand, granite – or, rather, its imprint – provides the light touch, even a sense of floating, while simultaneously still providing a three-dimensional element to an otherwise two-dimensional work of art. His prints are part rust prints, from pressing metal plates onto the paper, and part embossing, the result of pressing wet paper onto stone surfaces. 

The procedure creates abstract works with a rich and rough, architectural quality in which the imprint of the steel and the embossing from the stone interact much as both materials do in Mährlein’s sculpture. “The three-dimensionality of the prints is not just suggested through linear patterns, surface, and color values,” Mährlein says. “The embossed paper actually intervenes in a sculptural fashion in the surroundings.”

March 2008

Biography: Reiner Mährlein

Little Cube III, 2000

Steel and granite

5 x 5 x 5 in.

$ 1,650

Reiner Mährlein (b. 1959)

German artist Reiner Mährlein is a widely acclaimed artist in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, where he has completed several large public sculptures. He is part of a regular cultural exchange between artists from Columbia and its German sister city, Kaiserslautern, where the artist lives and works. Mährlein studied art at the Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts and at the Ecole Nationale Superieur de Beaux-Arts in Paris. He has been in solo and group exhibitions and has participated in exchanges throughout Germany and the rest of Europe as well as the United States and Argentina. His work is in several public collections in France and Germany, including that of his hometown’s main museum of fine art, the Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern.

Artist’s Statement: Reiner Mährlein

Inside II, 2003

Bronze, 1/1

4 x 3 1/3 x 4 in.

$ 1, 450

SURFACE – MASS – SPACE --

My sculptural works are constructed from the artificially made material steel and the primeval, natural material stone, especially granite and similar liquid-turned-stone from deep underneath the earth’s surface. These materials and the relationship between them create spatial tension -- a contest, as it were, between conflict and togetherness.

In my sculptures in Germany, the interaction between the three-dimensional objects made from welded flat steel plates and the stones’ mass creates varying spatial and architectural environments. In these situations, the steel plates, because of their particular properties, keep their flat-surface qualities, which is accentuated by the linear, often frame-like patterns of the welded seams. The stone mass, on the other hand, with its rough surface and relief structure, always intervenes in the space.

My sculptural work here at Lewis & Clark is different in that the steel beams don’t have the steel plates’ flatness but have instead substantial mass, like the stones. As such, the beams, too, intervene in the space. I made the sculptures here in Columbia, as part of the City Garage Project earlier this year. As such, I worked with whatever materials I could get from the remnants of the old City Garage on Gervais Street. While still working with steel and granite, I adjusted my concept to the shape and presence of this particular form of steel: beams.

In my print work, too, the fundamental principle in sculpture of the relationship between surface, mass, and space is the key element.

For my prints, I use the partly rusty surface of sheet metal that I shape with a cutting torch and work on with welding rods. I press the metal’s surface into the paper. Next, I use pieces of stone, broken from larger pieces with a wedge, to emboss the paper. I press the paper onto the stone surfaces. The stones’ grain and drill tracks create an embossed relief pattern in the paper. The imprints from the steel plates interact with the embossing from the stone in much the same way that the elements of my sculptures in Germany do. The three-dimensionality of the prints is not just suggested through linear patterns, surface, and color values; the embossed paper actually intervenes in a sculptural fashion in the surroundings. But contrary to the stone in my sculpture, where it is a heavy mass, the stone in my prints seems to float.

In my prints, the materials are connected in a reduced and concentrated form, but at the same time they retain their own life and mystery.