Willi Siber – Exakte Phantasie

Unbedingt anfassen! Das ist der erste und nie nachlassende Impuls, den Willi Sibers abstrakte Arbeiten ausstrahlen. Schimmernde Chromlack-Oberflächen und zartfarbige, filigrane Epoxidharz-Formen sprechen den Tastsinn ganz unmittelbar an, sie geben den Werken Transzendenz und Emotionalität. Seine Stahlskulpturen, Holzobjekte und Tafelbilder, die in vielen öffentlichen Sammlungen wie der des deutschen Bundestages vertreten sind, passen in keine Deutungs-Schublade. Stets lotet Willi Siber die Grenze zwischen Materialerfahrung und -möglichkeit aus, lässt geometrische Formen ins Anthropomorphe spielen, vergrößert Mikrostrukturen zu geometrischen Mustern, verbindet Nägel zu luftigen Farbwolken und lässt tonnenschwere Stahlarbeiten ätherisch schweben. Lustvoll demontiert Willi Siber künstlerische Ordnungsprinzipien und eingeübte Seh-Erfahrungen und erfindet sich immer wieder neu.

Touch me! This is the first, never-relenting impulse stimulated by Willi Siber’s abstract works. Gleaming, painted-chrome surfaces and delicate, pastel-colored forms made of epoxy resin directly address our sense of touch and invest the works with transcendence and emotionality. His steel sculptures, wood objects and panel paintings do not fit into any interpretive pigeonhole. Willi Siber is always exploring the boundary between the experience and possibilities of the material, pushing geometrical forms into the anthropomorphic, enlarging microstructures into geometrical patterns, joining nails into airy clouds of color and causing multi-ton steel works to hover ethereally. Willi Siber delights in dismantling principles of artistic order and accustomed visual experiences, and he continually reinvents himself.

There are endless ways to experience art. When you go to an exhibition, you will use your own special way. Perhaps you like to go the route designed by the exhibition organisers, perhaps you prefer to go the other way round, perhaps you only look at the main works or perhaps it is too crowded for you and you prefer the quiet corners with the more intimate works.

I have another suggestion for you: check at what age the artist created the individual works. I promise you, it will be very revealing!

Our Western culture is crazy about youth: the ideal of youthfulness prevails everywhere, in fashion, lifestyle, cinema, technology and the labour market. This is actually a paradox, as our society has long been dominated in terms of numbers by the over-50s and we are only at the beginning of a profound demographic change. It is not a paradox that the human brain is designed in such a way that if we believe this dictate and therefore perceive ageing as a flaw or weakness, our self-esteem actually declines. Life plans become less ambitious, the mental horizon shrinks and, in a negative sense, you become what society defines as an old person.

As far as art is concerned, I can tell you with certainty tonight - that's wrong! Open any art history and take a look at how many artists over 50, 60, 70 or even over 80 are really good: In ancient art, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya, for example. In classical modern art, Picasso, Käthe Kollwitz and Hannah Höch; in contemporary art, Louise Bourgeois, Maria Lassnig and Gerhard Richter. You might also like to take a look in reverse, to see who got off to a rocket-like start, wrote art history or at least shook up the art market and then sank into convention and boredom at the age of 50 ...

I am delighted to introduce to you this evening an artist who has just entered a wonderful phase in his work and life - Willi Siber. Willi Siber has been making art for 40 years, and he is getting better and better. Time and again in his artistic career, he has reinvented himself, left the tried and tested and successful behind him and set off into unknown territory. Curiosity, a love of experimentation and self-criticism, coupled with artistic confidence and experience, are the guarantee for an impressive artistic production that is still gathering momentum and from which we can expect many more years of wonderful works. SEIT MORGEN was once the title of an exhibition by Willi Siber and I think this is an excellent characterisation of this artist's positive charisma and creative impulse, which is borne by a spirit of research.

The title of our exhibition is at least as apt: EXACT PHANTASY. Willi Siber is a sculptor, painter, designer, inventor and Upper Swabian. He explores the physical possibilities of his materials with scientific meticulousness and precision and transforms these materials into structures that are pure imagination, that depict nothing but themselves and yet are so perfectly conceived that in our imagination they cannot be anything other than what they are.

Let me illustrate this with a few examples: The large standing figure (wood) is composed of two oval bodies, clearly abstract in design. Their proportions and the way they are arranged in relation to each other have clear anthropomorphic echoes - perhaps they remind you of the archaic figures of Easter Island or classical portrait busts? Willi Siber contrasts this strong figurative impression by covering the surface with irregular wooden cones and whitening the whole. As viewers, we perceive the marvellous relief quality and materiality of the sculpture at close range and are thus in close contact with it. As we move further away, this feeling changes and we perceive the monumental, timeless, archaic. Delicate and commanding, intimate and majestic - Willi Siber unites opposites playfully and confidently at the same time.

Or the other large standing piece here in the exhibition - made of steel and chrome lacquer. It has an extreme visual and tactile appeal. The perfect chrome finish gives its curves a sensual glow, it appears present and at the same time enraptured in its splendour - like in a car advertisement, where the car bodies sparkle seductively and the camera moves very close to the sheet metal to the accompaniment of flattering music. The structure of the standing woman follows the classic laws of human proportion, of supporting and free leg, of open and closed form. It draws quite naturally from the fund of art history - think of ancient sculptures, for example, which play through all these design principles. The aim here is to find a simplification of form that leads to the timeless, ultimately archaic. From the known to the unknown, from the familiar to the new. Siber's art can be described well with the concept of transfer: He reinterprets forms and materials, he transfers them into a new reality, he re-appropriates reality in his own way.

Willi Siber has a strong painterly element in his artistic genes, which he lives out excessively in his epoxy works. In many work steps, precisely timed to each other, objects are created from plastic sheets, wood, cardboard and nails that are clearly three-dimensional and only receive a final pictorial surface in the last step, with the application of the pigmented epoxy resin. These coloured clouds float on a fine nail relief, material and detached at the same time. Willi Siber calls these objects panel paintings. He thus conjures up the classical tradition, only to break it with relish in the next breath with his mixture of painting and sculpture.

Willi Siber is an Upper Swabian, ladies and gentlemen. Here in Upper Swabia, the landscape is lovely and varied, the climate is mild, the people are fun-loving and Catholic. Much of Willi Siber's art - the calculated overwhelming of the viewer, the sensual splendour, the extreme surface appeal, the transformation of the materials used and the blurring of the boundaries between the individual art genres - much of Willi Siber's art can be found in the wonderful Upper Swabian baroque churches and libraries. Sensual perception as a means of experiencing God.

What truths does Willi Siber convey to us poor Hamburgers with his exact fantasies? Find out, let yourself be seduced. Take the opportunity to ask the artist questions and recommend us to others - Hamburg needs more exact fantasies!

Dr Kathrin Reeckmann