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Artist statement (english language)

| Silke Rokitta

Working about aspects of cultural landscape I am interested in the interaction between human and nature. Our surrounding landscape is no pure nature anymore, we are influence,  we shape it, we create it since ten thousands of years.

Originally I am based in documentary photography. I worked about forest societies, which describe an extremely specialised habitat, about tree groups in botanical gardens and about rural strawberry harvest time in North Germany, where huge selling huts in the form of strawberries change the dimension of observable landscape.

Actually I work with commercial fertilizer salts and grow them back into their natural crystal shape. Mineral fertilizer salts make huge crops possible and are deployed in huge amounts. They let plants grow, increase the quality of agricultural produces, but compromise in production and by use groundwater and soil. Freeing the fertilizer salts from commercial and factual necessities I give them back their genuine crystalline structure. The useful and noxious substance which influences the environment happens to transform into aesthetical quality and follows physical and chemical laws to change into its true manifestation.

Additionally I am currently working about basic asthetic patterns forming visual elements of neolithic ceramics. Humans began to shape their natural surroundings by inventing agricultural techniques in the Neolithic revolution. They had to store their crops,and they decorated their ceramic storage and cooking vessels. In their decorations they used basic aesthetic elements like lines, points, waves and grids, cut into the moist clay. I took basic patterns of lines and worked them into linocuts, cutting repeated lines into groups and grids, exploring their visual qualities by hand, similar to growing crystals which add on in inherent angles. I printed them with earth pigments as a further reference to their origin.

I am interested in basic forms, patterns, given naturals laws and their variations. By artistic intervention and repetition in print, object and installation I investigate crystalline states, the order of series and systems, their structure, their mobility, their requirements in matters of time and their variations, interferences and transformations at the intersection between human, nature and culture.

Zur Ausstellung „Matrix“

| Silke Rokitta
Die Künstlerin präsentiert in der aktuellen Ausstellung drei unterschiedliche Werkgruppen – 
Arbeiten mit Düngesalzen, Linoldrucke auf Bütten und eine Stickerei. 
 
Düngesalze wie „Ammoniumsulfat“ oder „Kupfersulfat“ finden normalerweise in der 
Land–wirtschaft Verwendung. Während das Künstlerpaar Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger aus 
Kunstdünger pflanzenartige Gebilde entstehen lassen, züchtet Silke Rokitta Kristalle. Damit 
verwandelt sie die zu Pulver oder Granulat verarbeiteten Salze zu Objekten, die aufgrund 
ihrer leuchtenden Farbigkeit und kristallinen Form wie Edelsteine anmuten. Der Prozess der 
Herstellung funktioniert über Aufkochen der Düngesalze in Wasser und die Ablagerung der 
gelösten Moleküle zu Kristallen, wobei durch wiederholtes Erwärmen immer größere 

Zur Konzeption der „Salze“

| Silke Rokitta

Düngesalze ermöglichen hohe landwirtschaftliche Erträge und werden in enormen Mengen ausgebracht, sie lassen Pflanzen wachsen, erhöhen die Qualität, gefährden aber auch während der Herstellung und durch erhöhten Gebrauch das Grundwasser und versalzen den Boden.

Befreit von kommerziellen und sachlichen Aspekten gebe ich den Salzen ihre grundlegende kristalline Struktur wieder. Das Nützlich-Schädliche wird schön. Die umweltbeeinflussende Substanz verwandelt sich in zufällige ästhetische Form, folgt physikalisch-chemischen Gesetzmäßigkeiten, um das zu werden, was sie in ihrer Substanz wirklich ist.

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Artist Statement (engl.)

| Silke Rokitta

Silke Rokitta works about aspects of cultural landscape and is interested in the interaction between human, nature and culture. As a trained gardener and professional artist with a MFA degree from KMD, Bergen (Norway) she works about basic forms, patterns, given natural laws and their variations. With an intense interest in experiment and research she investigates crystalline states, the order of series and systems, their structure, their mobility and their requirements in matters of time and space. Her work includes (amongst others) documentary photography, print techniques like linocut and the growth of crystals made from commercial fertilizer salts.

Thinking about landscape

| Silke Rokitta

Landscape is a term grown in history, connected to landscape painting in 17th century.
Landscape is shape, human influence, in the transition between nature and culture.
Landscape is just in parts natural, but more cultural and changes constantly by human influence.
Landscape can be interpreted by the viewer.
The interpretation of landscape is based on ideas changing over the time. Weiterlesen →