Susanne Kessler does not create representations, nor final shapes, but processes. Threads, strings, cords, metal strips, wires move in space… Nothing that can be bound, or defined, or grasped. The eye finds nothing stable, no point of lull, no continuous flow of movement, no smooth path to guide the view.
The lines bundle, they swarm, overlap, condense, cross, intersect to form networks. All these deviations enrich the process of seeing, expanding it into the and boundless. If the viewer follows a certain course, another density or colour and speed pushes into the foreground and distracts the attention.
The course of our perceptions is constantly changing. These deviations, these changes in our visual process all charges our participation with energy. The processes falter, stumble, deviate and pick up new momentum to get going again. The viewer encounters resistance but overcomes it. Materials slow down the linear processes. Fabrics, rags, strips of metal make themselves felt as a stubborn reality. They don’t fit easily in. These lines no longer appear “ideal” but tangible and idiosyncratic.
We viewers are not only participants but we are part of this process. We feel the knots, embrace them internally and feel the resistance and incompatibility. These courses come together in a unwieldy way. As real as they are, they are also ‘materia’ ends.
What moves in the works of Susanne Kessler is not harmony of an ideal world. We participate, we do not just face the work. The movements that our eyes follow take place in our real space.
A work by Susanne Kessler does not present a confined unit before us; nothing finished. A quick glance is not enough – no eye-catcher, no overview. And yet everything works together and ultimately forms something like a unit. One finds neither individual parts nor a unified whole. Even the framing rectangles and the geometric pyramids multiply into rhythmic sequences. But there is also no disconnected chaos. Rather perhaps an inconsistent unity – a unity in the making.
The paths and activities that Susanne Kessler offer our eyes lead to a very special interaction in each of her works. One can experience it as a polyphonic action of energies working together and against each other. A cluster a bundle, a swarm, an agglomeration of felt experiences. You feel them not just with a glance or a quick look but rather you approach these moving processes with eyes that are actively engaging.
Text in Catalogue „Undatiert”, Kunstverein Lippstadt 2022