Heike Weber's works of art are developing a remarkable impact in sheer contemplation. The more the observer gets involved, the more s/he is drawn into a conflict of contradictionary emotions.
First of all the material confuses. Then, coming close the cubes that are gleaming seductively white reveal their true nature. They, of all things, are made of styrofoam, a material that may evoke unpleasant associations. The panels are cut so very thinly, it is surprising they don't fall apart despite the many breaks and cracks. The walls support each other. Already a light load would bring about the collapse.
In this new approach to the material styrofoam, that, as we all know, consists of smallest balls, we are stunned to realize its beauty as well as its vulnerability. The material seems to be in a state of atomization. The object's alarming fragility undermines the first impression of stability that was created by its strict form. The confusion is growing the longer the object is looked at. The object cannot be grasped as something whole - and grasping it, we again would be upset by its unexpected lightness.
Placing the objects in a line intensifies the contrast between form and dissolution. The association of machine-made production that is evoked by serial work is corrected by panels' handmade appearance of individuality. The material as such unyielding and reserved receives an unforeseen sensitivity to light that seems related to transcendence. Being objects of light the cubes develop an unreal aura. Whenever they are set in slight motion by a little draught, they look all transitory and floating.
This ambivalent game of formation and dissolution is continued in the works with wire. Can you still talk of sculpture facing this filigree of soldering filament? How little material can a form do with? Or would another question be more approppriate: Is it form after all, maybe a form in its relaxed state? The questions cannot be answered. The wire objects deny all definitions, all definiteness. They stay unassailable and cannot be classified in a category.
Heike Weber favours plain and relatively insignificant material that doesn't provoke the observer's interest. Instead of adding to the material, she takes away from it almost up to the complete extinction of the work. The same principle is applied in shaping the form: It is simple, a direct derivation of the basic forms. With this kind of radicality the works touch an area of fundamental experiences that hit right into the centre of the observer's sense of reality.
SABINE MÜLLER