The space created by dematerialisation is imperceptible. Even if it is a radical experience beyond the usual mode of expression, its impalpable depth and its fragmented and fragile visual aberration emancipates the eye of the viewer from any other existing surface, diluting any relationship between shapes , lines and separate time, surpassing concepts of realism and abstractionism. Over the elusive and perfect sound spectrum can be seen the tonal propagation of artistic gesture that, through the intertwining of chromatic tension and dramatic symbols and signs, rebuilds a sense of physical and dynamic matter generating a grid of floating images, that like real synaptic ganglia, regulate the movement of the artwork and bring it to fruition.
Analysing these concepts, Susanne Kessler focuses specifically on the synapses of the human central nervous system,, a connecting structure that allows dialogue between neurons. Like the dense network of conjunctions, the creations by this German artist are knotted in a single entity formed by thin lines of wood, canvas, wool, and other media building, the eso-skeleton of a primordial body immersed in a mystical ritual of perceptive trajectories that illustrate not only biological rules but also the organic proportion of human rituals. This all takes place in an interminable moment suspended in time and space between the abstract experience of the second half of the twentieths century and the experimentalism of environmental art.
Through a natural order of vibrating elements every work rediscovers the living and makes perceptible its pulsation, creating a reorganization of space that goes beyond hedonism and pure ornament, focusing on ancestral aesthetics. Each ambient becomes a mystical chamber, a place where unusual sorts of flora and fauna are generated, a swinging architecture that moves beyond the limitations of the common art gallery and its closely linked to the simplicity of nature human activities. The plants, and in particular trees, are fundamental images in the work of Susanne Kessler. The tree as the archetype of life, imago mundi, is able to synthesize the dynamic process of life communicating with land, water and sky. It is the esoteric symbol whose roots reach from kingdom of the dead, while trunk rises up as earthy life, and the leaves stretch onward to the future life.
The tree branches represent the essential structure of the synapses, a scheme that recalls the complex automatism of neutral response. In her installations Synaptic Drawing (2007) and Die Tafel (2005) Kessler covers such stem extensions with metal filaments that wrap and support the branches. Mutations form dense extensions from the ceiling to the bare soil or lie on the cold surface of an autopsy table, overlapping themselves like layers of memory. Metal wraps, the branches reaching the cortex, forming solid armour in search of unity among different realities in symbiotic existence, a life able to bear the transformation of its visual form.
Up to the Synapse (2008) and the Survival Kit Installation, the impetus of the German artist is to transfuse the pulses regulated by synaptic transmission. The first site-specific work is taxonomy of embossed and magmatic scattered images wrapping around the walls in patterns that resemble the changing essence of thought. Through their floating souls of monochrome paper, cloth, and other simple materials can be seen anthropomorphic images, arabesques, and other recognizable forms that rapidly turn into tortuous and tormented shapes. Dreamy visions confuse and amaze the perception with a proliferation of sounds and tensions; a wild loss of certainty builds a new order of outstanding figures with no restrictions.
In Survival Kit Susanne Kessler overlaps neural grids into a giant white canvas structure, a parachute that stops its fall in midair like a mobile image of eternity. There are no suspension lines on the parachute but a multitude of ladders that gather on the ground like the only way to salvation
from a universally recognized symbol of survival. Thus there develops a metaphor of Kantian thought on the perception of the surrounding area where objects do not possess immutable characteristics and forms but are related to human mental structures that create and manipulate the image and function of these objects.
With her work, Susanne Kessler reaches a personal artistic mysticism organizing the matter in a seductive pulsating grid that envelops senses and memory in a single endless flow of images, She brings to life visions that are an ideal bridges between the inner enigma hidden behind the forms of our daily life and human consciousness.
Text accompanying the solo show and catalog of “Susanne Kessler – Synapse” in the Galleria Diamanti, Rome, 2008