Vortrag von Ann-Sophie Lehmann: “My Relationship With Sculpture Has to Be Adventurous”. Phyllida Barlow und Material als Beziehung

Numerous video portraits, interviews and films show the artist Phyllida Barlow, who died in 2023, at work. These recordings of the processes of creating art, which inscribe themselves into the perception of the finished works and emphasize their being made as an aesthetic effect, are not limited to the direct interactions between materials, tools and the artist's hand. Other relationships are also documented, such as those between the artist and her surroundings, her parents, her partner, her children or her assistants. These social and ecological aspects of the work accompany Barlow's works and form a subtext that would remain hidden without the intensive depiction of the production ("Showing Making") and Barlow's reflections, which are characterized by sensitivity and wit. A close reading of Barlow's production processes shows how artistic material and human relationships form a socio-material network that underpins the aesthetic attraction of the large-format sculptures without biographizing the artist's work.