Angelika Loderer

Angelika Loderer

One might classify Angelika Loderer’s work as media reflexive sculptures in as far as the artist allows the characteristics of the material she uses and the work processes themselves to feed into the design process as fundamental parameters. Her sculptures are frequently made of cast metal or consist of secondary material from the area of metal casting—wax, for example, or special mould sand which, because of its high level of form stability, is particularly well-suited for casting. It is essential for the production of the mould but it leaves no traces on the finished product and so is invisible. Loderer elevates this auxiliary aid to her medium and builds fragile, temporary sculptures which, due to their character as mould sand, make allusions to metal while simultaneously setting up an exciting and paradoxical dialogue between the enduring nature of the one and the ephemerality of the other.

The unselfconscious and experimental way of dealing with material is characteristic of Loderer’s work method: unusual combinations of material generate exciting objects that sometimes suggest "performative sculptures" as, for example, where a mattress which has been stamped into moulding sand slowly liberates itself from its bonds and breaks the form or when bundles of hay covered in plaster wilt during an exhibition leaving only its previous exterior shape like a snakeskin that has been shed.

Loderer’s sculptures stand witness to the ambivalence between current snapshot and durability, between value, impermanence and meaning: she also questions the ascription of values by ennobling simple, commonplace forms by means of valuable materials.

Angelika Loderer, born in 1984 in Feldbach (Styria), lives and works in Vienna.

Curated by Bettina Spörr