ELEMENTALLY FORMED SCULPTURE  by Dr. Hermann Wiesler, Professor of Art History, Berlin Academy of Art (HdK)

Sculptures by Matthias Alfen have an original effect in an age of quickly produced and even more quickly consumed video and television images. Due to their availability and constantly retrievable presence, technically produced video images establish a fresh concept of esthetics by fostering a new open relationship to the fine arts. However, this does not apply only to the observer. The creation of art and the artwork itself reflect as well the effect of quickly saturated vision through increasingly diverse impressions. For this reason, the field of fine arts is required to keep its own rudimentary language more emphatically focused than in recent years. Paintings and sculptures are, solely by virtue of their static existence, a natural counterbalance to the world of lively television screen esthetics. The area of artistic activity is richer, more varied more contradictory, and more open than ever previously.

The presented sculptural and illustrative work by Alfen epitomizes this situation. One criterion in judging the modernity of an artist’s working method is to study the strength of the given structure’s interaction in opening, reflecting, seizing, or dismissing. Naturally, a token of radicalism such as Duchamp is not found every day. Accordingly, the artistic revolutions characterizing the start of this century (Duchamp, cubism, the expressions of pure color, etc) remain valid at its end.

Art evolves from art and against art. Desire for routine and pressures of the technical era contradict both the natural, unambiguous attitudes of artists displaying their “own signature” as well as the clearly discernable individual art language directed toward the audience’s outlook anticipation. Alfen reflects Brancusi and Wotruba in his work, yet he sharply parts with these artists. He made key decisions: no kinetics (Calder), no airy vistas (Pevsner). Alfen’s works quietly manifest themselves, solid, and seemingly immovable, without intruding or arousing nervous interest. Their sculptural effect is monumental – a natural, almost casual, unobstructive monumentality, rather than a far-reaching imperial gesture. This monumentality is independent of size and, as a result, his works, the size of a handspan, have the effect of concentrated, powerfully composed, but not obsessed with power, architecture.

"The three-dimensionality of each sculpture demonstrates not only the piece’s cohesiveness, but also the openness of the creative process."

No gesture and no set movement expand over its given volume in any work. The art forms rest, inherently stable, appearing closed from within. Smooth surfaces segment and are simultaneously stretched in right-angled break-offs from the sculptural volume’s guided periphery. Alfen renounces coarseness, crevices, sharp ridges, and suddenly rising and falling dynamics. The surface’s planes and contours serenely direct the observer’s view by drawing it toward deep, shadowed openings at central points of the multidimensional sculpture.

Alfen’s preferred materials are cast stone and bronze. The color is almost universally subdued and dark, reflecting neither flash nor gloss. All sculptures appear man-made throughout as finished items, completely in opposition to the concept of art as a composition of loosely acquired objects. The contrast between purposefully, intellectually designed art and natural evolution is acknowledged and stressed. Organic as some of Alfen’s works may appear, the border with nature is, nevertheless, always distinctly drawn. Alfen creates his pieces in a manner which leaves the sculptures free of limiting definitions and, thereby, increases the pleasure given to the senses of sight, touch, and fantasy.

The blocky, compact, squared works are anything but alienating. Often without pedestals, the sculptures stand unadorned – testimony to an artistic train of thought, based on hierarchical values, clearly and candidly disclosing the thought’s outcome.

The form is of utmost importance. The artist recollects the Egyptian hierarchical language of volume and surfaces while attempting to achieve total objectivity. What at first glance appears to be a cube or arch, is revealed as a complexly built, yet simply structured mass. Though each work has heavy, severe characteristics, none can be even remotely compared to any sort of cult object. The desire to see and touch the sculptures is aroused and demanded. Each work contains a unique sensual quality, which emanates from the smooth, inorganic, architectural form; and its artistic corporeality, through touching, provides more than a simple complimentary hand object.

From the side, stage-like light trickles into the shadowy planes, broken-off slopes, and shaft-like depressions cutting through the core of the sculptures, seducing the eye and thus safeguarding the very value of the art. Visual impressions pervade, verify, and intensify the viewer’s tactile sensations. The more closely an observer interacts with a piece, the more evident the unique value of the art becomes, for each work directly imparts an objective, material-bound experience which is neither overly intellectual nor patronizing. Alfen’s art, like modern art in general, does not fall under the influence of any higher authority, remaining instead stubbornly independent. Alfen’s objects convey from within a strong, visually perceptible quality. His artistic reference to an archaic past is not meant to be assuring, nor is it academically weak, clinging to already established patterns. Rather, the allusion to an archaic past is attained through a modern language of material form. Alfen successfully achieves this because his artistic vision is secure, courageous, and consistent, with no room for indecisiveness. Each work exists in its own ordered, created equilibrium. The three-dimensionality of each sculpture demonstrates not only the piece’s cohesiveness, but also the openness of the creative process.

Bent and slanted inwardly, the sculpture’s surfaces intercept one another, thus capturing the rich rhythm of movement in each work. Motion and counter motion remain in a reassuring balance. Though the sculptures are stationary, each piece possesses intensity both calm, yet provocative. This quality of inner calm, contained in nearly every work, is not achieved through caution, for the construction method of the sculptural architecture is designed to be intellectually flexible.

The qualities of chance and spontaneity, necessarily excluded in the sculptural work, are clearly evident in the drawings of MA. “Psychograms” of unchoreographed hand movements display wide variation, repeatedly playing through one form after another. In the end, this multitude of variation serves to enhance the logic, consistency, and seductively rich appearance of Alfen’s designed sculptural works.

Soest Fountain in Pedestrian Zone, Soest, Westphalia, Germany

DIALOGUE BETWEEN FORM AND SPACE - Commentary on Matthias Alfen's Sculptures by Dr. Curt Gruetzmacher, Professor of Art History, Berlin Academy of Art (HdK), Germany

As opposed to painting, which must use illusory means in order to create a sense of form on a flat canvas, the art of the sculptor is intrinsically physical: three dimensional, occupying a part of the space shared with those viewing the work of art. This fact alone creates a singular quality of perception. The artist’s work has presence, can be grasped by sense of touch, and is an object that speaks for itself – regardless of any similarity to figurative forms or abstractedness. The object’s character remains the distinctive mark. Thus, each successful sculpture conjures familiar emotions during the dialogue with the “shapes that speak – without speaking” (Octavio Paz). This unique language seeps into the space surrounding the work of art and, along with the object it encloses, creates the aura; or as Octavio Paz expresses, “the sculpture writes into space and what it writes is the stroke of its own wings.”

This animated dialogue between space and mass, between space and mass, between the compact shape and its surrounding area, can be observed particularly well in a group of works by Matthias Alfen, which display a uniform basic structure, through the names of individual sculptures vary. They are titled “Kubus” (1998), “Komposition I” (1987), and “Tectum”, a very large sculpture completed in 1990. These works share the cube as their primary structure –  a cube slightly uneven in the length of its edges. As in “Kubus”, the manifestation of a living structure is then incorporated into these compact forms. The sides of the cube are cut open and folded, first achieved through a non-parallel method of laying the edges, resulting in a slight deviation from a 90-degree angle. Walls are interrupted, protrusions erupt, and wide cracks seemingly enable views of the interior, although that is only an illusion. An inclined block in the middle with protruding corners interrupts the even outlines of the entire structure, which, in itself, is slightly conical. Each side provides a different view. There is not any main side for viewing, but rather an astonishing equality of respective views, which by not repeating themselves, create a certain surprise effect. The main artistic effect is created by transforming an obviously simple basic structure into a lively dynamic one. The material becomes rhythmic without exceeding the borders of the primary structure.

Something similar can be observed in “Komposition I.” The outline here remains contained as well, while the individual sides lose their rigidity through protrusions and extensions, through a barely noticeable shifting of the planes, or through an applied round shape. Consequently, the sides unfold, resulting in the creation of a complex architecture, which counterbalances the blocky heaviness. In the large sculpture “Tectum”, a far-reaching circle segment in connection with a barely perceptible conical mass determines the shapes, which is in turn loosened by a hollow, window-like passage. The exterior space is visibly incorporated into the sculpture’s mass while corresponding to the surrounding area. The hollow shape of the sculpture then becomes an active component of the full sculptural shape.

How does such a complex structure come into existence? Matthias Alfen works synthetically in the classical manner of a sculptor whose first thoughts are captured in preliminary sketches on paper. Afterwards, when the approximate basic forms have been ascertained, the sculptures are constructed in clay, which is then removed layer by layer. In this fashion, the artist gradually approaches what he envisioned as the final form. The working process is slow and contemplative. Corrections remain possible as long as the sculpture is emerging possible from the material, and, upon completion, the form will be ready to be cast in bronze.

Another group of works is composed of the “Kleine Stele” (1998) and the “Grosse Stele” from the same year. Both sculptures share a tower-like construction in which individual segments are layered like stories of a building, with a cubical and a round shape alternating respectively, while divided by a hollow space. The cavity, approximately the same height as its massive counterpart, enables one to look through the sculpture while also providing a rhythmic interruption. It is precisely through these interchanging rhythms that a strong dynamism is achieved above and beyond the sculpture’s height, thereby causing the blocky mass to appear lighter. This motif turns almost playful in the “Kleine Stele”, whose basic structure is again a square with edges interrupted above, below, and in the middle by a large quarter circle segment continually moved in a 90 degree rotation. Through the regularity and simplicity of these forms, the “Stele” adopts the character of monumental ornaments, simultaneously decorative and archaic, somehow reminiscent of lost cultural relics. Nonetheless, all sculptures made by Matthias Alfen retain their own identities.

The reference to antique forms and their transformation into extremely ornamentation is most apparent in Matthias Alfen’s sculpture, “Grosses Kreisornament”, created in 1990. On a base inclining inwardly, several circle segments open upwardly and are flanked by quarter circle segments with a half circle segment arching above them, thus creating the effect of a gateway enclosing the multiformed structure from middle to top. The symmetry, which here predominates and emphasizes the work as a meaningful symbol, is remarkable. Edges do not run parallel here either, but instead incline inwards. The pedestal appears to be somewhat crushed, suggesting a direct burden upon it. Additionally, the open half circle forms are not cut straight, but are slanted and, therfore, correspond to the diagonal sloping of the center block. In spite of the indisputable massivity, primarily through the contribution of the swinging arches.

The basic forms of this sculpture result from the artist’s contact with Egyptian and Middle Eastern cultures, experienced through both travel and museum study. These old cultures developed a sign language illegible to us today, but still possessing a universal charisma stemming mainly from the secret writing’s esthetic appeal. The drawings of Matthias Alfen already bear a resemblance to these antique sign languages because of their clear external features; they follow a lineal sequence, but the artist’s fantasy is not aimed at imitation or copy, but rather at a width of variation. After all, he does not want to transmit rational, decipherable message, but instead he uses the reservoir of shapes as stimulation for his own creative process. “Grosses Kreisornament” illustrates as well as inner significance referred to through sign language.

The sculptures of Matthias Alfen strive to achieve significance without being functional. This is their most essential difference to the majority of current sculpture, which tries to demonstrate functionality. Frequently, artists resort to machine manufactured parts or technical modules, which are then assembled in an alien combination, thus provoking a surprise effect for the onlooker. The spectator observes the individual pieces, knowing and expecting mechanical function, but he/she is then astonished or even amused, when this does not happen and his/her expectations are shifted toward an unanticipated direction. This precisely does not occur in Matthias Alfen’s work because he does not use prefabricated products, but instead prefers the classical material of bronze. His working process is characterized by the removal of everything superfluous, in order to approach and expose from the exterior to the interior the root of the sculpture’s meaning. In this way, a type of significant reality, not oriented toward external reality, comes into existence. Because of this fact, the human figure does not play a role in Matthias Alfen’s work. With all their human irregularities, such figures would disturb the balanced harmony carried out in the silent dialogue between form and space.