A symbiosis of abstraction and figuration, Anneke Kleimann’s exhibition IN ORBIT focuses on the artist’s ongoing experimentation with materials and the physical transformation of matter, while probing scientific maxims of time and space. Drawing from the visual languages of minimalism and physics, the exhibition features five sculptural works in a variety of materials including acrylic glass, papier-mâché and sugar, each exemplifying Kleimann’s adept manipulation and reinterpretation of materials.

At the centre of the presentation, Kleimann’s installation ‘Concrete Speculations’ (2019-2020) represents a constellation of seven heterogenous sculptures in papier-mâché, which fuse geometrical, organic, and elliptical elements. The “orbital” arrangement of the sculptures, their surfaces’ grainy texture, and the metaphorical absence of colour ("grey matter") allude to Kleimann’s exploration of a multiverse – a widespread hypothesis on the existence of infinite parallel universes. With each sculpture representing an alternate universe, Kleimann delves into metaphysical questions about the perpetuate expansion of time and space, yet only to distract the viewer from a visually playful choreography of abstract forms.

‘Sun’s Drawing’ (2019), a sculptural installation of 46 acrylic glass tubes leaning against three walls, is the result of Kleimann’s experiments with the ephemeral nature of light and shadow by using transparency and sunlight as a medium. Here, the artist captured the waves in which light is measured in physics in the delicate process of bending glass cylinders. Exposed to sunlight, the translucent tubes cast shadows, which Kleimann uses as a blueprint for new sets of reproductions, each unique, depending on the angle to the sun.

‘Swiss Mountains Echoed (0.1360-0.2235 sec)’ (2016) builds upon Anneke Kleimann’s exploration of sound and space. The lines of an echo’s soundwave captured in the Alps and translated into a sculpture. The abstract, graphic representation of the echo is transformed into a shape, which again visually refers to its origin – the mountain range.

Made of glass fibre laminate covered in saturated yellow lacquer, Kleimann derived the design of her sculpture ‘Mü’ (2016) from the lines and curves of a spherical tumbler. Through the solid mass of the hemisphere’s lower section, the object balances around its gravitational centre, touching the floor just at one point. Relying both on handcraft and physics, this labour-intensive work embodies many of Kleimann’s recurring interests – process, form, principles of weight and immateriality, limitations, and the physical connection between matter and space.

‘Sculptor's Delight’ – Vol. I (2019), Vol. II (2019) and Vol. V (2020), are part of Kleimann’s ongoing series of marshmallows, enlarged versions of candy braids. After pouring a self-manufactured sugar mix into moulds, the long drying process allows the originally soft, fluffy mass to harden and preserve itself. Having a long tradition as an ephemeral form of art – dating back to the sugar sculptures adorning the banquet tables of Italy’s Golden Age to Pop art aesthetic and sugar as a commodified addictive substance – Kleimann relegates any cultural connotation in order to reinterpret sugar through modern modes of production. Notwithstanding her aim to discover the complexities and caprices of the used substances and applied methods, the retained marshmallow odour, like a Proustian memory, can also be read as a meditation on childhood.

Through craftsmanship and refined simplicity Anneke Kleimann’s sculptural vocabulary gives form to both the observable and the unobservable, the verifiable and unverifiable image of the world. Deducing natural laws from her close observation of the universe, Kleimann repurposes matter into sensory and revelatory new arrangements.

Anneke Kleimann (b. 1988, Oldenburg) studied at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts and at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts Paris. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at various institutions, including Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Oldenburg (2021), PALACE Ort für interdisziplinäre Untersuchung und Utopien, Düsseldorf (2021), Wassermühle Galerie Trittau (2020), und Dahms, Wardenburg, Germany (2019). She lives and works in Berlin.