Willi Siber: Free Association

Born in 1949 in Eberhardzell, Germany, Willi Siber hails from an era of late modernism, when narrative was a dirty word and form or surface trumped any kind of realistic representation. Siber says, “The objects evoke varied memories. They exist independently of significant, meaningful contexts.”

The performative way we enter a gallery and engage with sculpture has shifted in recent times. As the experience of art has become more immersive and sensual, how does the work of this respected artist, who is represented by sixteen major galleries around the world, stand the test of time? Well, Siber remains inventive. He works hard to disrupt audience expectations and upset our viewing habits. He wants to surprise us and says, “These properties (distinctive haptics and optics) measure up to the beholder’s expectations of the manual or artistic way of composition. My approach of practice deliberately contradicts these expectations and familiar visual habits: I’m trying to acquire new unexpected forms of expression and appearance from the basic material.”

Siber’s sculptures comprise twisted metal forms (reminiscent of drinking straws) that defy our expectations of the possibilities of metal. These metal forms painted with enamel are highly desirable and seductive objects; they create a lively sensual experience, they demand touch. Siber’s honeycomb-like wood and emulsion works cast shadows and project outwards into gallery spaces. They are experiments with form and spatiality. He says of these sculptures: “Structures, light and colour compete with the found shape and the basic material. Within the engaged reflection confusions between form negating and shape emphasising aspects arise.”

Could Siber be a torturer? His nails and epoxy resin relief sculptures are like violent beds of nails. They play with shallow relief space, but also with matter. The surfaces, pressed against the nails or pegs, are sheer abstractions. The resin of the liquidy surface gives the appearance of biological matter or even cosmic galactic gases. These associations are not subjective but collective, in the sense of a universal catalogue of visual knowledge. However Siber refutes this position, protesting that, “my works are always free and independent objects … and won’t be narratively explained.”