KRISTIANE KEGELMANN

Kristiane Kegelmann, born in Munich in 1990, has her roots in the culinary field, the patisserie. She was trained at the organic bakery Fritz Mühlenbäckerei in Munich and continued to work at the K.u.K. Confectionary Demelin in Salzburg, Austria. She lead the design station at K.u.K. Confectionary Demelin in Vienna for four years and finished her master training in 2015. Always having had a sincere passion in design and art, she transferred her knowledge into a new realm and started to work as a food artist. Kegelmann is a true pioneer in moving a very established craft, in this case that of the patisserie, into a contemporary art context. In her sculptural work, she uses ephemeral materials such as chocolate and other edible ingredients which she combines with solid materials like cement, glass, and steel. Kegelmann challenges our perceptions of food production and consumption, in her case the Patisserie. By manoeuvring this fixed idea of one field of food production into a contemporary art context, her work becomes unique and complex, playing with the malleable appearance of her sculptures and the possibility to consume them. Kristiane has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions in and outside of Berlin.

I am not a sculptor in the classic sense, but I think and work sculptural. I shape and work with edible, organic and ephemeral substances, like chocolate and a wide range of other materials. In doing so, I challenge the possibilities for my artistic expression and design. Transforming these materials lead to new and surprising forms of perception and context. My small sculptures are often integrated into an interior. Large scale and site-specific installations increase the challenges of the technical aspects. Here I'm exploring the experience for the senses and what binds everything together.

My artistic work reflects my constant inner engagement with honesty and authenticity, which is expressed through the process of confronting deception. Reality is never that which is smooth, beautiful, superficial or perfect in appearance. It is always also that what is fragile, cracked, morbid, and ephemeral. Observers are asked to use their hands to actively change and destroy these “facades”, the surfaces of the sculptures so that the foundation can come to light.

The experience of the work is about the clearing away the first impressions. This transformation, which the observer experiences through multiple sensory impressions, like touch, smell and taste, symbolically stands for the experience of the beauty of the imperfect.

October 2017