Man Aufrecht Bleiben, 2021

Claudia Mann – Stay upright

The sculpture Staying upright constitutes a central starting point in the work of Claudia Mann. The basis is a discovery: a long, not very deep hole in the ground, the negative form of a human body, inspired by the classical S-movement of the High Gothic, in which the standing and playing leg meet in a countermovement. She translated this void of physical presence into a bronze sculpture. From a gesture inscribed in the ground thus emerges a physically upright, organic sculpture that anchors the human dimension in the earth and at the same time grows out of it.

The connection between the human body and the ground on which we live runs Claudia Mannthrough all of her work – both from an ecological perspective that addresses the respectful handling of nature and the environment, and in the sense of an art historical engagement with the medium of sculpture. Even in its origins, sculptures were created from natural materials – carved from wood, shaped from clay, or carved into stone. And the human body was always at the center of these works. This tradition is Claudia Mann taken up and permeates it with contemporary questions: What does corporeality mean today, in relation to the environment, history, and oneself?

Her artistic understanding of sculpture is not purely formal or material-based – but rather existential. „At the heart of my work is the human being. For that, I don’t need to model a person at the moment. I don’t need images either; I fuse material and internal (psychic) and external (physical) processes.“, "That is how the artist sees it," she says. She views the work on the sculpture as a process, as a search for traces, as a physically perceptible reflection on being human.

The technology of mold-making plays a central role in this process. It allows the transformation of terrestrial surfaces, self-created negative spaces, or modeled landscape fragments. „Sculpting gives me the opportunity to lift the ground, to adapt it, to turn it around, to relate it to all the components and to re-question it.“ A hole in the ground, a pit, a footprint become for them artistic manifestations of presence: fragile, open, alive.

This results in works that literally out of the earth develop – mostly in direct contact with their surroundings. Sculptures that fit into the ecological and social fabric of the local area. With an awareness of material, place, and context, they Claudia Mann also reflect the ecological footprint of their work. An example of this practice that is self-evident to them, their attitude is the series Staying upright (2021/22). Works of this kind were exhibited in the Jacobihaus of the Künstlerverein Malkasten. The floor was not only understood as a carrier of form, but also as an active repository of time, memory, and gesture. The human body, as a print, movement, and idea, always remains present – in its upright form, in the material, and in space.

Claudia MannS's work moves consistently between theory and materiality, body and space, between the past and the present.. Her art is quiet and at the same time penetrating, grounded yet open to transformation. It poses central questions: What do we leave behind in the world – and how do we remain upright in it?