n o u v e a u x d e u x d e u x
Benedikt Hipp
I GOTTA HUMAN FACE
8 September – 21 October, 2023
Text by Luisa Seipp
Autopoiesis comes from the Greek and stands for "self-production" and "self-organization". In
system theory, it means the production of something as the work of itself, the production of a
living system from the network of elements that it consists of.
Munich artist Benedikt Hipp sees in this approach a parallel to himself, to us, to the society in
which we live. We always try to change ourselves through outside influences, yet our greatest
potential for change lies within our inner selves. Similar to the geological phenomenon of
diapirism - powerful salt rock structures that form within the earth's mantle and slowly
penetrate into overlying layers, deforming them and causing them to grow cone-shaped into
the sky.
Hipp finds a similarly archaic approach in the production of ceramic works, which form a
significant part of his oeuvre. By shaping the clay and igniting the fire, he can influence the
production process, but the ultimate result lies in random synergies and the primal forces of
fire and is not precisely determinable for Hipp. Through the firing process and the heating to up
to 1,300 degrees Celsius over several days, the ashes’ minerals fuse and are deposited on the
surface of the clay, sometimes as a shiny porcelain-like glaze, sometimes as rough and darkly
burnt areas. Here, too, chance determines the surface structure of the sculptures. It is
unpredictable, enclosing the sculpture in a mystical, shiny to raw and roughened shell of blue,
green, gray with dark grains and patterning. Hipp explains that the interplay of oxidation and
reduction determines the color play of the glaze. Oxidation tends to produce warm
red-brownish tones, while reduction allows the color to change from white to pale blue,
greenish or metallic shimmering tones.
In ceramics, the artist surrenders to a process of continual learning. Learning to let the natural
elemental forces of the universe take their course, to see entrenched ideas crumble into dust,
and new systems and dynamics emerge. For Benedikt Hipp, the fascinating thing about
ceramics is its fluid nature of openness to outcome. In this way, it differs fundamentally from
our modern technology and our relentless eagerness for progress, which always aims at an
efficient as well as pin-point accuracy.
The artist selects the clay for his sculptures with the utmost care; the acacia wood for firing he
transports from the Villa Massimo in Rome, where Benedikt Hipp was a resident in 2020/2021.
This shows the great value he places on the geographical origin and biographical significance
of the materials he works with. For that matter, he also built the kiln himself based on ancient
traditional kilns and adapted it to his local conditions.
Even the act of burning has a deeply personal and participatory meaning for the artist that
almost resembles a ritual. Given that people already gathered around the fire in the Stone
Age, Benedikt Hipp's garden in the Bavarian town of Finning on Lake Ammersee also
becomes a meeting place for the whole neighborhood. The spectacle of the glistening flame
rising through the narrow chimney into the sky seems to exert an archaic attraction. The
surrounding neighbors come by, bring beer and food, and take turns in assisting Hipp with the
burning process –which requires full attention for hours, especially at the end.
nouveaux deuxdeux | Amalienstr. 22 | 80333 München | [email protected]
n o u v e a u x d e u x d e u x
Benedikt Hipp
I GOTTA HUMAN FACE
8 September – 21 October, 2023
Opening: 7. September, 6pm - 9pm
It almost seems as if new social orders and systems are being developed through the
gathering around the kiln.
After about 40-60 hours, the fire slowly dies out and Hipp is able to free the wondrous objects
from ash and pull them out of the kiln. They appear strangely distorted and organic, like
severed body parts. A plumpish foot, for example–or objects for which one simply doesn’t
know whether they are really part of this world or have found their way to planet Earth through
unforeseen circumstances.
Benedikt Hipp achieves to transfer the magic of his ceramics to his paintings and therewith
triggers a fascinating interplay of dimensions. In his paintings, seemingly detached and
isolated bodies accumulate into new forms, then dissolving and recombining. With a
vehemence that reminds us of Francis Bacon's organic deformations and distortions, we
become witnesses to a strangely fluid state of our own perception. As we look, we allow
seemingly loose things to become whole again. When Benedikt Hipp talks about his painting,
the term of emergence (Greek "emerges" = to emerge) is often used. Individual parts that are
not visible on their own, but only manifest as an entity or a system through their composition or
fusion.
Benedikt Hipp's fascination with plasticity as well as fragmented organic forms that merge into
new orders, is probably also rooted in his family history. His ancestors worked as wax pullers
and Lebzelter since the 16th century. They made votive offerings and replicas of human
organs and body parts from wax. At that time, these were offered by the faithful to their patron
saints in the hope of healing the body parts affected by illness or accident. Thus, even as a
child, Benedikt Hipp was surrounded by waxen body fragments, as well as the accompanying
fears, belief systems, and hopes in the healing and reorganization of broken bodies.
Usually, Benedikt Hipp always determines a title for his works. By doing so, he doesn’t intend
to influence the viewer in composing their own structures and systems. Instead, it helps him to
find an access to the image. There is no defined narrative within his works; his titles are rather
indicative of the cosmos in which he found himself when the work was created. And this often
reveals a recurrence of themes such as interconnectedness, structures, walls, and the fluid.
Formation (2023) or Diapir (2023), for example, refer to the aforementioned geological
structures, which develop in the interior of the earth's mantle and rise as new formations.
It is difficult to pigeonhole Benedikt Hipp. He is not necessarily a sculptor, not a surrealist, not
an abstract or figurative painter, not a draftsman, not a conceptual artist, and yet he is
everything at once and so much more. In art and more generally as a society we learnt to
always think in boxes. Hipp helps us to overcome them and to think outside existing
categories. He wants us to create systems that function differently and grow beyond the
existing rigid orders, to create new physiognomies, the face of a new social system – a new
human face.His wonderfully timeless works that almost feel like out of time are at the same
time so zeitgeisty, as they become snapshots of our very individual perception. How and what
do we see? How can we put individual things together and let new systems emerge?