Markus Karstieß – Irden

“Working in clay bears the unexpected, which I regard as a gift.” Markus Karstieß (b. Haan/Rhineland, 1971; lives and works in Düsseldorf) studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts from 1992 and 1998, finishing in the class of Jannis Kounellis. In 2005, the encounter with Lucio Fontana’s large-format ceramic relief Il Sole (1952) in the pavilion built for the work by Erwin Heerich on the Raketenstation Hombroich inspired him to try his hand at working in clay. He eventually focused his creative energies on this material and intuitively entrusted himself to its intrinsic dynamic qualities, developing a distinctive formal idiom in sculptures, installations, and spatial ensembles. Using a wide range of firing techniques such as the ancient Japanese method used to make Raku ware or old Arabian metallic glazes, his oeuvre unfolds between the organic and the geometrical, the sombre and the gloss of glamour, crude form and perfect surfaces. In his artist’s book, Markus Karstieß explores the interplay between his art and the architectonic and natural surroundings at the Siza Pavilion at Raketenstation Hombroich through the lens of photography. Over the course of weeks, he visited his exhibition Irden at different times of day and night, probing the works’ effect on the viewer. The resulting photographic essay is complemented by a conversation between the artist and the collector Volker Kahmen, who lives at Hombroich, and essays by Jannis Kounellis, Friedrich Meschede, and Frank Boehm.