Category: interview
Subject: Thomas Rentmeister on his work
Author: Peter
Nijenhuis
Date: 10th of January 2015
Visual artist
Thomas Rentmeister (1964, Reken, North Rhine-Westphalia) studied at the art academy
of Düsseldorf under Günther Uecker and Alfonso Hüppi. Rentmeister's work was
exhibited in Germany, France, The Netherlands and Australia. He lives and Works
in Berlin and is a professor at the Kunsthochschule für Bildende Künste
Braunschweig.
Since the nineties
you work with products and materials anyone can find in an average European
supermarket or hardware store. Your approach seems akin to that of minimalist
artists in the sixties of the last century. You refrain from a personal touch,
self-expression and traditional sculptural composition. Like the minimalists you seem to prefer
industrial products and their arrangement in a simple way, stacked or one thing
after another. Sometimes however, your way of working seems to be a deliberate
breach with the principles of Minimalism. Some of your works are objects, such
as bread rolls and furniture cushions, cast into bronze, which seems to go
against the minimalist rejection of illusion. Your work has unmistakably its
own character, but it seems that it was not from the beginning simply what it
is now. You graduate when you are thirty. It's the year 1993 and the next six
years you make a series of polyester blobs. In 1999 you show for the first time
a work in wich you applied Nutella chocolate spread. Two or three years later,
somewhere in 2001 or 2002, you do something with an astounding and ravishing
outcome: you smear the outside of refrigerators with Penaten baby cream. In
2005 you exhibit stacks and heaps of white consumer products such as sugar, paper,
and polystyrene crumbs. Nowadays you also combine chocolate spread with iron
wire mesh. Was the direction your work took throughout all these years the
outcome of a pre-established question or a more or less delineated interest, or
did you come where you are now by trying a lot of things and consequently
rejecting certain things as well?
In the nineties I almost exclusively worked on a
series of high gloss polished polyester sculptures, that some call 'blobs'. A
small work, destined to be hung at the wall, in 1999 helped me to overcome this
single minded focus on just one material. It was a thermoformed rack I found
somewhere, to which I applied a layer of Nutella paste with the help of a breakfast
knife. The resulting form had the characteristics that are well known from
spreading a sandwich. Apart from some works dating from the mid eighties, like
the Coffee cup line, this was the
first work for which I used food products as a sculptural material. After ten
years of polyester the Nutella rack was something of a fresh start because it
stimulated me to enlarge my repertoire with materials such as Penaten baby
cream, sugar and coffee powder and because these new materials I started to use,
demanded a more radical approach. For some of my installations I limited
processing to strewing which led to merely large quantities of material arranged
in the form of heaps. Since then I developed my work in a playful way. My
approach was not analytic, but intuitive and I tried my hand on all kinds of
things. I think my work is nonetheless
characterized by a personal hand, the choice of materials and objects that are
part of it, and the way I arrange them. Looking back on my work, although heterogeneous
by nature, you can point out a recurrent theme, or even several recurrent
themes.
Your blobs from the
nineties have flowing, round forms and smooth, shining surfaces. One could
associate these features with modernist design from the sixties and seventies
of the last century. Did this ever matter to you or were there other reasons
for making these blobs?
Surfaces made with great technical perfection, are
above all known from the world of design. The play a role in art - the work of
John McCracken is an example - but to a lesser degree. In my blobs they play a
role in combination with a variety of bimorph forms on the one hand, and, even
more obtrusive, a spectrum of colours covering more or less the brown palette
of excrements. This palette ranges from vanilla, a grubby, fleshy pink and hues
of middle brown, generally perceived as repulsive, up to the deep brown of dark
chocolate. I purposely chose this combination of form and colour in order to
enrich the in itself technoid aura of the shiny surface with an organic
component. By their absurdly perfect, yet to biological processes referring
appearance, I tried to make alienating objects that disturb to such a degree
that associations with design are obscured. For me the use of garish colours
such as lilac or turquoise never came into question. A potential buyer once
asked me if I could reproduce the shape of a pale brown sculpture in navy blue.
I refused, because to me – and this might be a subjective point of view – a form
was always connected to a specific colour.
Why do you use
chocolate spread and Penaten baby cream? Is it their relative unmanageable nature,
the fact that unlike clay they are not really appropriate sculptural materials,
or do you use these materials for their empathic potential? With the last I
mean that chocolate spread and Penaten baby cream are able to arouse our senses
and to call to mind virtual scenario's for action. Seeing chocolate spread for
most people is enough to involuntarily and virtually taste its sweetness and
feel its stickiness. In the back of their minds they will also automatically
take care not to besmirch their clothes by accident. Likewise, seeing Penaten
baby cream, for most people it's not difficult to imagine and virtually feel
how comforting and cooling the effect of this cream must be on a pair of red
and searing baby buttocks. Seeing Penaten baby cream and Nutella most people
have no trouble imagining scenarios of risk as well. You can imagine for
instance, that you are more likely to slip away on a surface of watery Penaten
baby cream, than on a surface of relatively viscous and sticky Nutella
chocolate paste.
Al you mention, plays its part in the work's impact,
although I'm not sure which material poses the biggest danger of losing one's
footing. Their unmanageable, and in the case of food products, evanescent
character is a source of inspiration. The fact that they slide from you grasp,
with new forms and structures as a result, very much excites me. The empathic
potential you mention, distinguishes my work from that of the classical
minimalist from the sixties, exactly because it evokes 'virtual scenario's' and
thus rises above the purely self-referential aspects of the work; the more it
does so the better, even up to the edge of kitsch. In my work not only stories
are told though. What matters as much is the tangible interaction between the
work of art and the observer and his or her behaviour. My polyester sculptures
are intended to be looked at. Their appearance however is tempting, which
sometimes brings the spectator to be a groper. In the best case this results in
fingerprints on the surface that disrupt the aesthetics. In less favourable
cases, the result is damage to the surface that, depending on its size and
depth, can be hard to repair. Of course things are different when we're dealing
with the Nutella and Penaten works. In the case of an unintended contact, the
smudging of clothes can be seen as an act of aggression of the work of art
towards the spectator.
Does something like
that apply to your stacks and heaps of sugar, paper, textiles and polystyrene?
These works call into memory the unpleasant feeling of crumbs on my skin when,
as a child, I ate bread sprinkled with sugar in my bed and inevitably spilled.
Is it of any relevance to you that seeing these materials one involuntary
imagines that sugar, paper and polystyrene combine into an uninviting surface
you just do not want to sink into, that they form what must be an intractable
sculptural mass and that cleaning up after the exhibition will cost time,
effort and exasperation.
Crumbs in your bed are something like grid in the
machine. From time to time I feel the irresistible urge to throw sand in the
gears, to wreck or smudge things. Perhaps relics of a childish stubbornness
have a part in this and perhaps I should have this analysed psychologically.
But no, better not, it would probably suck dry my source of inspiration. After
all it's fantastic that an artist is paid to strew crumbles and cause mayhem. The
heaps and crumbles raise questions like 'where to go with this mess when the
exhibition is over?', or, 'who will clean up afterwards?' The thought that
handling the consequences of such an 'art contamination' is part of the overall
concept and in an ideal case is professionally organised, will not cross
everyone's mind. The costs of disposal must be taken into account from the
beginning, like the costs of transport in the case of 'normal' works of art.
You have also created
the contrary of these stacks and heaps. I mean your very orderly stacks of
tissue paper. Was it your intention to make a calming gesture with these works
and to call forward sentiments of graceful ease, hygiene and clarity?
Making art for me always stood apart from the
intention to fully canalize its impact. The way a work of art functions
regarding its effects is simply the result of its condition. In the case of the
rectangular cuboids made of paper handkerchiefs the visible exterior points at
the hidden structure within. The same
applies to the refrigerators spackled with Penaten baby cream. After all, a fridge
has an interesting plastic inside with unmistakable sculptural qualities. Of
course you don't see this when the door is locked, but on a subconscious level it's
before the mind's eye when looking at the exterior. The aromatic scent of the
Penaten baby cream, that seals of the smells in the interior, also plays a part
in this multilayered perception.
The structure
of the paper tissue cuboids is of no lesser complexity. Already a single
tissue, through its patented folding, brings with it a degree of complexity. On
top of that comes the printed cellophane of a single wrapping, of which several
are held together in a multipack by a second colourful printed cellophane. By
stacking them, individual packages are distorted depending on how high or low
they are located in the stack, then the weight – after all a few tons of paper
- presses together the lower layers with more force than those higher up. Perhaps
it's trite, but I very much like to think about the inner structure of these
works. I'm fascinated by the idea that the regular order is undermined by
thousands of similar, yet slightly different deformations, with as many
irregular interstices. A kind of micro chaos thus unfolds along the coordinates
of a construct, which also extends itself along the time axis, because in each
handkerchief slumbers the possibility of deformation and destruction through
use.
In a misguided moment
one could compare your work with that of Jessica Stockholder, Magali Reus,
Miles Thurlow or Georg Herold. What distinguishes you however, is colour. You
do not adjust paint or colour. The colour in your work is the colour of the
prefabricated products and materials you use. Is that a deliberate choice for
sculpture as an art and to set your work apart from painting?
Indeed, since the mid eighties, so rather shortly
after I started to occupy myself with making art, I stopped applying colour to a
support in a painterly way. Perhaps it was, at that time, already a strategic
decision that allowed a dialog with the world of objects. Yet colour as a theme
– at least as an immanent feature of objects and materials – runs through all
my work. The colours of the polyester works I mentioned before, dating from the
nineties, were mixed with the polyester resin before hardening. The
installations of stacks of fridges, partly covered with a transparent,
glaze-like layer of Penaten baby cream, with their wide spectrum of white hues
are also related to colour as a theme, and the same applies to the spatial arrangements
and heaps of mixed materials and objects.
One could read a
grain of nostalgia into your work. Minimalism and consumer products are the
fruits of what the French call Les Trente
Glorieuses: the height of modern
society in the first thirty years after World War II. An unknown and
uninterrupted economic growth awoke great expectations. Modern technology would
make it possible to free mankind from poverty, injustice and the toil of
labour. These expectations are in many ways disappointed. Yet in art,
literature and music to this day references are made to the era that brought
them forward. Some years ago German singer and writer Peter Licht touched the
hearts of Germans with das Lied vom Ende
des Kapitalismus (The song about the end of Capitalism). References like
these could be of the same order as calling to mind a love that passed or a
happy, but long gone period in childhood or adolescence. It's harrowing, but
sometimes we cannot leave it, so it must be something we need and is part of
us. In such a way one could think. But has the fact, that Minimalism and the
supermarket were historically relate to the hopeful years of modern society,
ever been of relevance to your work?
In the two last of these glorious decades I grew up and received a substantial
part of my socialization. Surly the modern ideology of prosperity marked me as
well, although my attitude towards that was, and still is, very critical. My
memories of West-Germany in the sixties and seventies are definitely a source
of artistic inspiration. Nutella, Penaten Baby cream and Prinzenrolle were
booming articles. I still remember the extensive advertising campaigns. Their
bliss promising nonsense already then provoked my aggression and probably this explains
my unusual relation to these products.
One could also
interpret your work differently, in a way that stresses its topicality and
focuses on the future. One could argue after all that Minimalism, in its stress
on the physical experience of the object and its surrounding space, is one of
the first movements in art that reacted to the change in Western thinking.
After ages putting mind above body and matter, in the twentieth century the
tables were turned. New ideas, such as the embodied
mind theory, put forward that language and thinking are possible because we
have a body, that by way of movement and sense experience is able to relate to
other bodies and objects. Because we have bodies we can feel and imagine what
is force, movement and acceleration, phenomena we have ultimately been able to
state in scientific terms. In short, the body is no longer a second rate
appendix of the mind. The body is the beginning of all else. Consequently the
twenty first century will be the century of the body and the object that
emancipated with it. In art for this reason the focus should no longer be of
allegedly immaterial ideas that are hidden behind the artwork or embodied by
it. In the centre should be the work of art as a body or object that has the
potential to arouse our senses and thereby our thoughts, associations and
imaginable scenarios for action. In this way one could think, but have ideas
like these played a role in relation to your work?
Surely the Minimalism of the sixties served as an
example, because in my work enthusiasm for a sensuous oriented understanding of
art always was an important drive. Nonetheless I doubt if the twenty-first
century will be the era of the body. Taking into account digital technology and
its all spheres of life invading presence, I much more fear a withering of corporeality.