HERBERT STATTLER | SPITZENWAREN

Herbert Stattler explores a history with 38 drawings encompassing other and further stories. It revolves around the biography of a Stuttgart company that commissioned and distributed lace ware. Stattler's drawings are based on the company’s archives, offering a kaleidoscope of fragments of time, revealing simultaneously textile, technical, cultural, and consumer history. Since the plots concerns the history of handwork, Stattler's series not only addresses their techniques but also the working conditions of female home-based labor. This extends the album into the realm of social and economic history in the first half of the 20th century: World War I, the turbulence of the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazis, and World War II. However, lace ware production is not limited to purely material and historical dimensions. Its patterns echo significant aspects of both older and more recent art history. We see the evolution of ornament—from its rise in the Renaissance, its devaluation as mere decoration, even a »crime« according to Adolf Loos, to its emancipation as an aesthetic practice of autonomous form finding.

finissage and book presentation 10 May 2025 from 6pm | show until 9 May | opening hours Wednesday thr. Friday 3 to 7pm and by appointment (tel.: 0176 615 220 31)

forthcoming     past

Sigmaringer Str.23 | 10713 Berlin