Karin Grenc / WOOD-LIKE OBJECTS

WOOD-LIKE OBJECTS

Karin is a playful alchemist. She is able to turn an ordinary piece of wood into a finest piece of gold effortlessly. However, this gold, as alchemists like to stress out, is not the crowd’s gold. It is clear that we are not talking about the well known, expensive metal, but the so-called spiritual gold. Karin Grenc is a modest and hard-working artist. By using magical skill of transformation, she reanimates dead substance and gives it another, completely different life, pointing once again to the fact that spirit is above any matter.

Her fragile body conceals great strength and will. In her tiny hands, sculpting tools become powerful means of fighting thickness and obstinacy of the wood. She wants to soften it up, break its resistance and make it in her own image. Karin is a cheerful and playful demiurge. She creates a unique and unrepeatable world. Therefore, she has developed her own measure, specific stylisation and recognisable personal canon. Her studio is a cabinet of curiosities, a ground comprising various, mostly forgotten objects that serve as resources for the creation of a new universe. This curious kind of compassion and respect that Karin feels for the rejected provides her sculptures with additional value and warmth. Has not the stone rejected by the builders become the cornerstone? In the same way, the wood that has been washed onto a shore by the strong southern winds becomes the wood of life. In truth, there is no waste in the nature. It is exclusively the consequence of human actions against nature. Also, waste does not exist in the artist’s studio. Anything can be reused, new life breathed into it, and returned to perpetual circulation. As discipline of physics teaches us, matter is  indestructible. The world is not anything else but perpetual motion, a wondrous and mystical recycling process. A continuous departure and return to the source.

Deep inside, Karin has an inborn instinct for simplicity. She does not overcomplicate or decorate things. She achieves her goals using minimal interventions and shortest paths possible. Her characters are already hidden somewhere in the wood. One just needs to recognise them, make them visible and set them free from any excessiveness. Tree rings, knots and cracks become emotions and transform into clearly articulated thoughts. Karin understands the essence of the wood and everything that makes it the way it is. She does not smother or negate it, on the contrary, she preserves and affirms its true nature. She is also aware of the fact that she has a very powerful helper, one that prepares half of every new artwork for her – time. Traces left by time and atmosphere on wood or metal that cannot be imitated. Cracks, patina or rust are interesting means of expression, cheerfully appropriated by Karin as a sort of half-readymade. It is the aesthetic of strong opposites, her spiritual self-portrait. By using raw materials and craftsmanship approach, she achieves exquisite sensibility and fine psychological characteristation of characters. In some places, subtle traces of (mostly sky or sea blue) colour can be found,  giving in that way a gentle contrast and a hint of atmosphere to the scultpures. Karin skillfully walks on the edge, looking not to slip into spaces of banality or mawkishness. The way she models and composes her wooden elements is always deeply thought, well composed, sculpturaly mature and completely authentic.

Karin is like Geppetto, her wooden figures talk to us with clarity. We just need to press our ears closer to the wood and we will hear something. We will hear a heart beating inside.

Hrvoje Marko Peruzović