Benedikt Hipp
I GOTTA HUMAN FACE
8 September - 21 October 2023Autopoiesis comes from the Greek and stands for "self-production" and "self-organization". In system theory, it means the production of something as the work of itself, the production of a living system from the network of elements that it consists of.
Munich artist Benedikt Hipp sees in this approach a parallel to himself, to us, to the society in which we live. We always try to change ourselves through outside influences, yet our greatest potential for change lies within, our inner selves. Similar to the geological phenomenon of diapirism - powerful salt rock structures that form within the earth's mantle and slowly penetrate into overlying layers, deforming them and causing them to grow cone-shaped into the sky.
Hipp finds a similarly archaic approach in the production of ceramic works, which form a significant part of his œuvre. By shaping the clay and igniting the fire, he can influence the production process, but the ultimate result lies in random synergies and the primal forces of fire and is not precisely determinable for Hipp. Through the firing process and the heating to up to 1,300 degrees Celsius over several days, the ashes’ minerals fuse and are deposited on the surface of the clay, sometimes as a shiny porcelain-like glaze, sometimes as rough and darkly burnt areas. Here, too, chance determines the surface structure of the sculptures. It is unpredictable, enclosing the sculpture in a mystical, shiny to raw and roughened shell of blue, green, gray with dark grains and patterning. Hipp explains that the interplay of oxidation and reduction determines the color play of the glaze. Oxidation tends to produce warm red-brownish tones, while reduction allows the color to change from white to pale blue, greenish or metallic shimmering tones.
In ceramics, the artist surrenders to a process of continual learning. Learning to let the natural elemental forces of the universe take their course, to see entrenched ideas crumble into dust, and new systems and dynamics emerge. For Benedikt Hipp, the fascinating thing about ceramics is its fluid nature of openness to outcome. In this way, it differs fundamentally from our modern technology and our relentless eagerness for progress, which always aims at an efficient as well as pin-point accuracy.
The artist selects the clay for his sculptures with the utmost care; the acacia wood for firing he transports from the Villa Massimo in Rome, where Benedikt Hipp was a resident in 2020/2021. This shows the great value he places on the geographical origin and biographical significance of the materials he works with. For that matter, he also built the kiln himself based on ancient traditional kilns and adapted it to his local conditions.
Even the act of burning has a deeply personal and participatory meaning for the artist that almost resembles a ritual. Given that people already gathered around the fire in the Stone Age, Benedikt Hipp's garden in the Bavarian town of Finning on Lake Ammersee also becomes a meeting place for the whole neighborhood. The spectacle of the glistening flame rising through the narrow chimney into the sky seems to exert an archaic attraction. The surrounding neighbors come by, bring beer and food, and take turns in assisting Hipp with the burning process –which requires full attention for hours, especially at the end. It almost seems as if new social orders and systems are being developed through the gathering around the kiln.
After about 40-60 hours, the fire slowly dies out and Hipp is able to free the wondrous objects from ash and pull them out of the kiln. They appear strangely distorted and organic, like severed body parts. A plumpish foot, for example–or objects for which one simply doesn’t know whether they are really part of this world or have found their way to planet Earth through unforeseen circumstances.
Benedikt Hipp achieves to transfer the magic of his ceramics to his paintings and therewith triggers a fascinating interplay of dimensions. In his paintings, seemingly detached and isolated bodies accumulate into new forms, then dissolving and recombining. With a vehemence that reminds us of Francis Bacon's organic deformations and distortions, we become witnesses to a strangely fluid state of our own perception. As we look, we allow seemingly loose things to become whole again. When Benedikt Hipp talks about his painting, the term of emergence (Greek "emerges" = to emerge) is often used. Individual parts that are not visible on their own, but only manifest as an entity or a system through their composition or fusion.
Benedikt Hipp's fascination with plasticity as well as fragmented organic forms that merge into new orders, is probably also rooted in his family history. His ancestors worked as wax pullers and Lebzelter since the 16th century. They made votive offerings and replicas of human organs and body parts from wax. At that time, these were offered by the faithful to their patron saints in the hope of healing the body parts affected by illness or accident. Thus, even as a child, Benedikt Hipp was surrounded by waxen body fragments, as well as the accompanying fears, belief systems, and hopes in the healing and reorganization of broken bodies.
Usually, Benedikt Hipp always determines a title for his works. By doing so, he doesn’t intend to influence the viewer in composing their own structures and systems. Instead, it helps himself to find an access to the image. There is no defined narrative within his works; his titles are rather indicative of the cosmos in which he found himself when the work was created. And this often reveals a recurrence of themes such as interconnectedness, structures, walls, and the fluid. Formation (2023) or Diapir (2023), for example, refer to the beforementioned geological structures, which develop in the interior of the earth's mantle and rise as new formations.
It is difficult to pigeonhole Benedikt Hipp. He is not necessarily a sculptor, not a surrealist, not an abstract or figurative painter, not a draftsman, not a conceptual artist, and yet he is everything at once and so much more. In art and more generally as a society we learnt to always think in boxes. Hipp helps us to overcome them and to think outside existing categories. He wants us to create systems that function differently and grow beyond the existing rigid orders, to create new physiognomies, the face of a new social system – a new human face.
His wonderfully timeless works that almost feel like out of time are at the same time so zeitgeisty, as they become snapshots of our very individual perception. How and what do we see? How can we put individual things together and let new systems emerge?
Text by Luisa Seipp
Benedikt Hipp (DE 1977) lives and works near Munich.
His works are known through numerous internationally noted exhibitions. During the last years he has shown institutional solo exhibitions at Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Ludwigshafen (2015), Kunstverein Bielefeld (2010), Kunstpalais Erlangen (2012) or Art Basel Statements (2009) as well as much regarded group exhibitions at Fondazione Memmo Rome (2021) Haus der Kunst Munich (2018), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2011), CAPC – Musée d’Art Contemporain Bordeaux (2012) or Kunstverein Hannover (2012). Benedikt Hipp has been incorporated into the “Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst” in 2010. Comprehensive monographical catalogues were released in occasion of his 2015 solo exhibition at Wilhelm-Hack-Museum at Kerber, in 2013 at DISTANZ for this solo exhibition at Kunstpalais Erlangen and 2009 at argosbooks. In 2020/21 he was honored with the Rome Prize Fellowship at the German Accademy Villa Massimo, Germany's most renowned Award for artists.2017- 2019 guest teacher at Züricher Hochschule der Künste, ZHdK, C2022- WATER FROM THE SOURCE, Galerie Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf, DE
SONGS FROM THE CAVE, Galleria Poggiali, Milan, IT
2018- Benedikt Hipp, Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden, DE
Abisso Calipso, MONITOR, Rome, IT
Body Upgrades, Galerie Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf, DE
2017- Towards the glacial regions, with André Trindade, MONITOR, Lisbon, PRT
2016- Vacation from Human, Nicoals Krupp Gallery, Basel, CH
2015- The educated monkey, MONITOR, Rome, IT
Ich habe meinen Augen nicht getraut, auch meinen Ohren nicht, Wilhelm- Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, DE
2013- Bleibsel als Reflex, Galerie Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf, DE
His works are known through numerous internationally noted exhibitions. During the last years he has shown institutional solo exhibitions at Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Ludwigshafen (2015), Kunstverein Bielefeld (2010), Kunstpalais Erlangen (2012) or Art Basel Statements (2009) as well as much regarded group exhibitions at Fondazione Memmo Rome (2021) Haus der Kunst Munich (2018), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2011), CAPC – Musée d’Art Contemporain Bordeaux (2012) or Kunstverein Hannover (2012). Benedikt Hipp has been incorporated into the “Lexikon der Gegenwartskunst” in 2010. Comprehensive monographical catalogues were released in occasion of his 2015 solo exhibition at Wilhelm-Hack-Museum at Kerber, in 2013 at DISTANZ for this solo exhibition at Kunstpalais Erlangen and 2009 at argosbooks. In 2020/21 he was honored with the Rome Prize Fellowship at the German Accademy Villa Massimo, Germany's most renowned Award for artists.2017- 2019 guest teacher at Züricher Hochschule der Künste, ZHdK, C2022- WATER FROM THE SOURCE, Galerie Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf, DE
SONGS FROM THE CAVE, Galleria Poggiali, Milan, IT
2018- Benedikt Hipp, Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden, DE
Abisso Calipso, MONITOR, Rome, IT
Body Upgrades, Galerie Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf, DE
2017- Towards the glacial regions, with André Trindade, MONITOR, Lisbon, PRT
2016- Vacation from Human, Nicoals Krupp Gallery, Basel, CH
2015- The educated monkey, MONITOR, Rome, IT
Ich habe meinen Augen nicht getraut, auch meinen Ohren nicht, Wilhelm- Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, DE
2013- Bleibsel als Reflex, Galerie Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf, DE