E. R. Nele: Contemporary Witness

When speaking to the artist E. R. Nele, who was born in Berlin in 1932, one will discover that she always has been and still is constantly on the move. Her work reveals the way she pauses to reflect on particular moments in time, and her bright and perceptive reactions. She never submitted to an artistic dogma, never committed herself to a specific style, and never abandoned the intuitive interaction of perceiving the world as a reflexive contemporary witness, of the interplay between eye and hand. In light of the numerous talents articulated in her life’s work, it is not surprising that she is referred to as one of the most versatile artists and designers.

In the 1960s she designed modern and variable interior landscapes for the Kassel-based company bodeform, whose individual parts could flexibly be rearranged and assembled. For the Swiss branch of the Detmold company Temde, she developed over 80 different types of lamps—floor lamps, table lamps, ceiling lights, and wall lights, which characterized the 1970s in terms of material, elegance and clear contours. She designed and manufactured chairs, tables, jewelry and even cutlery sets. The furniture, lamps and cutlery were usable; the jewelry was wearable. And yet it seems as if each object, considered on its own, is but another sculptural expression of possibility, in the midst of a still growing body of artistic work. The quintessence of her oeuvre is that everything she creates is determined by a correlative interplay between floor and wall pieces and autonomous objects within the given space.

Designing lamps and domestic interiors is connected to creating atmospheres and emotions. The way in which E. R. Nele continues to showcase the human figure as the central theme of her work is equally emotional, mostly implemented in metal, but always with a focus on the psychological and physical vulnerability of humans. Many of the themes which she has addressed and continues to address remain as relevant today as they were then. Artists, poets and journalists are still being threatened, imprisoned and killed, anti-Semitism and racism still exist, and, apart from human-made climate change, the greatest threat to humanity still emanates from the nuclear arsenals of various states.

E. R. Nele herself says that during her lifetime she neither exclusively searched nor found. Instead, she has always reacted artistically and creatively: to the things that moved her and to the things that made her angry.

Curator and Director: Matthias Wagner K
Press contact: Natali-Lina Pitzer / T +49 (0)69 212 75339