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VERNISSAGE D'AUTOMMNE / D'HIVER 2003
Gabriele Weinmann and Wigbert Stapff
Between colour, form and word
Painting, writing and designing jewelry – are these several lives inextricably linked? Quite often, Gabriele Weinmann and Wigbert Stapff have to answer the same questions: What is it you like best: designing jewelry, working as a goldsmith, painting, writing? When do you do the one and when the other? Designing, doing creative work, that is, was fascinates both of them – apart from the constant presence of the most different forms of art.
Painting
The first impression when looking at a painting by Wigbert Stapff is that of an almost impenetrable composition of colour. A fireworks of forms and colours. The observer's eyes are virtually chased over the picture. Once you get involved, however, unexpected things emerge.
You recognize memories of forms and events you carry within yourself. A part of a building's wall or entire silhouettes of houses, the capital of a pillar, a woman facing the observer, a group of people, seated and discussing, a lion. Stapff's pictures are venues, where figures and objects are collected almost coincidentally. Everyday events and drama, dreams and realities.
There always seems to be a multitude of things happening at the same time. Faces look tense and questioning. Something decorative intrudes into a no man's land, which might also be a room. Playing with perspectives is particularly appealing to Stapff. It pushes the contradictory pictorial events even further. What might be perceived as the painter's volability is his concept of pictorial invention. The abstraction of an idea or a feeling, formulating on a sheet with drawing or painting, that's what drives the process. Always inspired by music. Surprising himself by what he is doing. He sticks to single depictions that can be combined, newly arranged and linked.
Watercolours
Stapff counteracts the technique of watercolours. He paints layer on layer without destroying the ease and spontaneity which make up the true character of watercolours. He favours hard paper. Stapff doesn't seem to have specific knowledge of the pictorial event. He fills undercoats with colours and lines, layer by layer. He is driven by his desire for polyvalent interpretation and it makes him paint different situations, clear in themselves, in layers. He looks for a face amongst all the colours and forms. He looks for the events. He works light and transparent, as if he were to layer painted glass. The pictures move. If you get involved, you uncover a multitude of branched correlations. An accidental meeting, an exchange of glances, fleeting idylls, everday secrets. The play of light reflexes. A kneeling figure turns into a face with a helmet, the knees into an ornament or architecture.
Ornament
Apart from a colour selection of many contrasts, the line is the fundamental element of the image's set-up. The line finds its symbolic character in the ornament. The ornament's purpose goes far beyond the pure pattern and is thus much more than irrelevant and abstract decoration. The different levels of reality get mixed, because the ornament is not limited in scale. The ornamental game grows into space, into architecture and written characters and jewelry characters are found on objects and bodies.
Words are for Gabriele Weinmann what colour is for Wigbert Stapff.
"The more we see, the more has to be added by thinking. The more we add by thinking, the more we have to believe we are seeing." (Lessing, Laokoon).
Alberti's "finestra aperta", the picture as an open window.
Moments sent into the picture.
Vision pyramids then and now.
Thought outlined in the pictorial events.
Talks – also to oneself.
Colours in water. Lines in ink.
Figures – tempel – fragments – fresco – frieze – flowers
animals – lakes – music everywhere.
Words that are colours and signs.
Architecture emerging from patterns.
Arising form playing with knowing.
Arising from knowing about playing.
Ornaments everywhere.
Unfamiliar to the eyes.
White tunnels break into the picture.
A bright there. A dark here.
Seeing begins in front of the picture.
Colour whirls train the eye muscle to the point of giddiness.
Emerges the knee – the shoulder.
From colours in space.
And standing –the figure – watching.
And vanishes no more.
Until light gives new vision.
Gabriele Weinmann
Gabriele Weinmann
Born in 1956 in Neuenstadt on the Kocher. After taking the A-levels in 1976, apprenticeship as jewelry goldsmith in Pforzheim. From 1979 until February 1983 study of design at Pforzheim Polytechnic of Design. Topic of her diploma dissertation: “Moveable – Variable –Colourful”. A treatise upon her own understanding of jewelry.
Wigbert Stapff
Born in 1954 in Fritzlar. Study of design at Pforzheim Polytechnic of Design. Diploma in 1982. Focus of diploma dissertation: Stones cut by himself / Topic: “Forms shape forms of living”.
For three years, from 1983 to 1986 he taught stone-cutting at Pforzheim Polytechnic of Design.
Weinmann + Stapff
Since 1983 Gabriele Weinmann and Wigbert Stapff have been working together in their own workshop-studio. In 1989 opening of goldsmith studio “Weinmann + Stapff” in Heidelberg, Germany. Regular exhibitions in the studio focus on various topics for new jewelry, such as
- Jewelry based on Chinese characters
- Opals and pink diamonds – results of a journey to Australia
- „Ikarus“ – flying feather-jewelry
- “I love the strangest up into the sky. I love the most naked crazy like a bird“ Paul Eluard – Erotic Jewelry Temptations
- Hieroglyphs + petrified wood – Ancient Egypt offers new jewelry ideas
- Cat’s-eyes, star gems and other exotics
- „I see the salamander walking through every fire“ Ingeborg Bachmann – Poetic jewelry stories
- Conch pearls – pink dreams
- Shimmering like a rainbow at night – Tahiti pearls
- Magic Pearls®
Since 1981 exhibitions in jewelry and arts galleries in Europe and the United States. International jewelry presentations in i. a. Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Kuala Lumpur, Toronto, Los Angeles, Miami, Washington DC, San Francisco etc.
Jewelry
The connection to jewelry design in particular is obvious to Gabriele Weinmann and Wigbert Stapff. There are unlimited opportunities to use the different subjects and forms to turn jewelry into elaborate objects.
The human being is the point of reference. Only once both fit each other, the person and the piece of jewelry, once they have found each other something special has been achieved.
Unique specimen are made at the goldsmith atelier in Kapellenweg, not just variations of the ever same idea. It is not just another colour of a different precious stone that turns a new piece of jewelry into a unique specimen. Each piece that's made has its own use of forms. Just like every human being is unique so is every piece of jewelry.
It is exciting to see Tiepolo's colours balanced on a ring or to make a jewelry object that reflects Lenné's idea of garden design. The playful transformation of everything offered by architecture, painting, music and nature makes for the attraction of the resulting jewelry. Only then will the jewelry tell us the story of its origin. That is how limitations are broken and can be understood in other countries by people speaking different languages.
Magic Pearls® are a very special point of focus of Gabriele Weinmann and Wigbert Stapff. It is an invention that has been patented in the US, Europe and other countries.
Magic Pearls® is about helping pearls become perfect. During the growth in the shell often more or less prominent imperfections occur. The better the quality of the pearls, the more beautiful their shine, the more obvious these natural spots become. With Magic Pearls â the pearls' "wounds" are being replaced with precious stones that are cut in the shape of the pearls' surface, thus becoming truly united with the pearls. The light shines into the centre of the pearl like through a window. Opals, with their rainbow-like colours, are the favourite stones for these enchanted pearls.
Any truly new idea requires openness and courage because it implies radical change. Accepting something new, developing something new without discarding the original, on the contrary, treating it gently and transforming it, that is what drives Gabriele Weinmann and Wigbert Stapff. That is how the idea for Magic Pearls® emerged.
Description of jewelry
Different jewelry objects with Magic Pearl® from the South Seas, Tahiti and Australia, 750 gold, different coloured gem stones, diamonds. Some are variable.
Pendant with Australian Magic Pearls® , Ring with Tahitian Magic Pearls®, Platinum, opal inlays, white and coloured diamonds.
Rose quartz pendant with black Tahitian pearl drops, 750 gold, diamond, opal inlay. Champagne coloured South Seas pearl necklace.
This year's exhibition at Goldschmiede Weinmann + Stapff at Kapellenweg:
November 29, 10.00 – 17.00 h until December 24.