within and beyond our grasp

in french, the word creux – from the verb creuser, to dig – denotes a cavity. in art, the term is predominantly used in the context of printing techniques, where gravure en creux designates intaglio engraving. but it also encapsulates the gesture of the sculptor who gives form to a mass by hollowing it out. appropriately, philipp röcker has on occasion described his work as ‘using the hollow of the hand to lend volume to the void’.
in his most recent works, the artist, who works between düsseldorf germany, and bordeaux, france, seems to reverse this process by suggesting the form qua absentia – that is, en creux. this is most obvious in the three-part sculpture vor, hinter und jenseits des wissens (before, behind and beyond our grasp, 2018), whose near-programmatic title refers to the individual stages of the creative process, from conception to form, which röcker deems complete when ‘the material transforms into a sizeable object that feels right – a counterpart’. regardless of the material or medium he uses – plaster, clay, wood, terra sigillata, bronze, aluminium – the resulting work always bears the physical imprint of the sculptor’s action.
in its latest iteration, the wedge, which in slender column-like forms such as levelscape (2016) or l’ombre (the shadow, 2018) functioned as a support to keep the sculpture level, or as an equally powerful, massive-matterist pendant (form of the present 2018), implicitly refers to something that no longer or not yet exists. it opens up the sculptural space for the interpretation of the beholder, who almost instinctively tends to assign a function or meaning to the resulting void. this play with presence and absence or with emptiness and fullness, can also be observed in other works most strikingly in the suggestively titled ein neuer ort (a new place, 2019), whose shape is reminiscent of shackles, but also in untitled, a semi-circular cut-out that seems to await further use. intriguingly, the word creux may also be used to express this explicit state of incompleteness. indeed, if a beholder makes a lecture en creux of a work, he or she attempts to derive something from it that is not explicitly expressed or present, but which attracts his or her attention precisely by its conspicuous absence – in the case of röcker’s work, the sculptural equivalent of ‘reading between the lines’, if you will. presumably, any such reading would dwell on the ambiguous symbolism of wedge and chain, which in turn could be interpreted as an expression of the artistic state of mind following a momentous change of place and culture. yet this, as the artist has made clear, ultimately lies ‘beyond’ our grasp.

text by patrick (boris) kremer