BIO

Lena Kaapke, born in 1989 in Flensburg, is a young artist based in Kiel (GER). Kaapke works as a conceptual artist in the field of installative contemporary ceramics. She graduated in Fine Art and Ceramics in 2015. After that she finished a three years research project about “the color red in ceramic technologies.” As a result, she developed the “redspace” color system for the color red in ceramics.

Her work was awarded by many awards, last by the Culture award of the city of Kiel. Since this year she is represented as one of the youngest artists in the Federal Collection of Contemporary Art of the government of the Federal Republic of Germany.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Within my work I create sensual spaces. My projects combine interdisciplinary questions and topics that always arise from personal interests, observations and experiences, which I then “research” artistically. Cartographic explorations become visible. The installative works are translations, they follow a highly conceptual scale that I have set. They show “thinking-spaces” and question these at the same time.

Ceramics as an artistic discipline is particularly important to me. In my artistic work, I (try) to achieve a conceptually holistic definition of ceramics. I always understand ceramics, as one of the oldest cultural products, as a visual materialization of their own manufacturing processes. Ceramics carry a history of raw materials, technologies, the manufacturing conditions, time, space and often of everyday stories. Through this materiality, ceramic transports a context, a material iconology that cannot be separated from any ceramic shape. At the same time, the ceramic material cannot be mastered due to its complex technologies and processes without manual knowledge and manual experience. These two dimensions are intrinsic to ceramics, they determine to a certain extent the perception of the artistic discipline of ceramics. This interests me. In my highly conceptual installations, I try to bring these different dimensions in the materiality of ceramics together.

My work reflects the possibilities offered by traditional ceramic processes while simultaneously questioning the role of ceramics in contemporary art.

All my works are installative sightings, surveys and appropriations of contemporary subjective narratives of perceptions. The works are created through performative and gestural movements, as well as a methodical attention to detail. This is an expression of the desire to fully understand the medium of ceramics that I have chosen. At the moment I am continuously inquiring the definition of ceramic color and attempt to artistically deconstruct/construct ceramic paint. The result is a conceptually holistic work body on the subject of “Inquiring the red”. Different works/installations question different properties, conditions, processes and applications of ceramic red and thereby question the conventional definition of color.

Project Network Reunion Invitational Residency 2022