Silk Piece I. 2000-2004, ca. 9x8x6 cm. Silk threat: 1000 m
Collection Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main

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Silk Piece II. 2004-2009. 7,8 x 8,5 x 5,7 cm. Silk threat: 1000 m
Collection Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main

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Silk Piece III. 2007-2010. 8,5 x 6 x 6,5 cm. Silk threat: 900 m ( 100 meters black and 800 meters white)
Collection Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main

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Conceptual sculptor JENS RISCH patiently knots kilometers of silk threat to product a highly concentrated and dense object the size of a fist. In some cases the resulting “Silk Piece” took four years to complete. Additionally the artist has kept a diary scrupulously recording the work he performs every day for several hours. This recording allows RISCH to draw inventories of the methods he uses and of quantifying how much work he has carried out, in what time and with what results.

His minimalist sculpture seeks to reduce artistic intervention as far as possible. His methodical and repetitive work on matter betrays no signs of formal planning. The shape of RISCH‘s objects exclusively depends on the characteristics of the material chosen and on the physical tension produced during the tying process.

RISCH‘s knots, then, are a way of testifying to the infinitely slow passing of time and of recording it. The final shape of his works is a sort of coagulated time. The sculptor focuses on the pure and simple act of tying knots, refusing to resort to any system that might accelerate his work. The result is a creative process that seems to find its founding value in slowness.

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making of (watch the video here)

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Each work of the “Silk Piece” consists of a single silk threat about one kilometre in length, which the artist has woven, knot after knot, into an inextricable tangle: “I tie knots on a thread until no more can be tied“. By the end of the first phase of this work, the thread has already been shortened by one third of its original length. A second phase then begins in which Risch continues tying his knots. The end product is a result from a series of passages. The artist describes these different phases as “generations”: an allusion to the field of biology that by invoking the idea of filiation illustrates the various phases in the creation of the work.

JENS RISCH lives and works in Berlin: more on his website http://www.jensrisch.de/