Charlotte Posenenske is a German born artist who makes sculptures and paintings and who interestingly became a sociologist towards the later decades of her life, her work is broadly about industrialism and mass production.
Her work visually centres on industrial materials and representation with the flatpack style boxes and brackets being repeated (with some variance) to create different objects from the same materials. Her work very modular in this sense and the sense that the different objects relate and communicate with each other in the space, the different component parts contribute to the understanding of the whole.
Posenenske’s wall hung sculptures use different types of language; brighter colour, matte or gloss surface, curves are used as well not just angles. This gives them a different feeling to the viewer but the sense of modularity and mass production are still present; all of her forms look as though they could be 3D printed and easily assembled by anyone in today’s world.
This could perhaps have been Posenenske’s point, that if corporate consumerism and mass production continue to aggressively expand art could become a function and not a passion. this is again emphasised by her choice of materials and forms, all industrial in nature and all products of man not directly of nature. Had these forms been made from grained wood they would have had a completely different feel with the natural wood contrasting the man made references.
This careful consideration of modularity and sensitivity to materials is something I want to try and replicate through my work but in my own way, although I do like the idea of having easily repeatable forms that can expand to fill or take over a space. I also love the simple but powerful use of colour to make relationships between the objects, so they can be effective as an individual thing but also belong to a collective. This is also our paradoxical desire as humans, to be unique and to be accepted, which goes against the phrases like ‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered’.
I want to also take forward the fact that she painted and sculpted simultaneously to have a flow between her ideas, for me this is something I feel I have forgotten how to do effectively which leads to be getting stuck or frustrated easily. If I can have multiple ways of working through or thinking about an idea then I can be a more versatile artist and adapt better to any more unforeseen circumstances (Covid) that may happen in the future.
