text: Carsten Theumer

ULALU – Playing with sand

For some years now, I have been taking a closer artistic look at aluminium as a metal that is relatively easy to cast.
Using a sand casting method with two moulds, I can use this metal to good effect, especially in relief sculpture and medium-sized formats. When casting into sand moulds, I never aim to reproduce existing models and instead work spontaneously, removing, scraping and cutting into the sand as a moulding material to create a negative, or recessed, mould that does not take on its final, three-dimensional shape until it has been filled with the liquid metal.
When I start out, my images are only vague ideas; the constant to and fro between the positive and the negative ultimately results in a randomness that is intended yet nonetheless surprising.
For the past two years, the pandemic has held us trapped within a new reality with hitherto unimaginable experiences. Tried-and-true strategies for living our lives are worth next to nothing.
Within my art, experiments now take up by far the most space. I am countering that huge, unknown MINUS with a new, unknown PLUS – equalising the charge, as it were, with my desire for as much harmony as possible in my daily life.
To me, aluminium is still the image carrier, while ice, snow, wet clay or the plaster from my own back yard provide the base for my moulds. I cast liquid aluminium into thin sheets, which are then deformed, shaped, assembled, combined with other materials or dyed through electrolysis. As if it were necessary to fight an artistic battle against an invisible foe.
I discovered enamel during this period, first in combination with vessels, then when painting old enamel baking sheets.
The series entitled Echo Chamber (“Echokammer”) was my first departure into the world of coloured images, something that until that point I had considered unthinkable.
However, the theme was of secondary importance to me, as the images are very certain to be part of everyday pandemic life for many of us and thus generally comprehensible.
My primary aim was to fathom the possibilities of applying coloured enamel to the sheets, effectively combining different methods in the process – injecting, stencilling, stamping, painting, scraping, sketching and powdering, at the same time saving on firing processes for several colours.
Using the many old, round baking sheets I had found as image carriers made it easy for me to focus on the theme and loosely incorporate any possible technique-related failure.

This is war. But we still have our art. My experiments continue...