MIRIAM LENK- ELAN VITAL

I. The central figure in Miriam Lenk's imaginary world is a female archetype; oversized, swelling body, product of a wildly proliferating nature that knows only Eros, of an eternally pregnant and pregnant world - ultimately a modern vision of our prehistoric idols, which are almost only bellies. This archetype does not stand in isolation, but is part of a natural process that we cannot control, the experience of which gives us an inkling of the dimension of the overall cosmic structure that transcends all human imagination.

Lenk begreift ihr eigenes schöpferisches Arbeiten als einen vergleichbaren Parallelismus zu den formenden Kräften der Natur. Ihre Frauenakte erscheinen entweder als kleinteilige Elemente im großen Fluss des Naturgeschehens oder, aus diesem herauswachsend, als mächtige, in sich geschlossene Gefühlsräume, Zeugnisse ungezügelter Lebenslust, einer hemmungslosen Vitalität und Erotik, vorgetragen in einem Furor, der die treibenden Urkräfte der Natur aufruft.

Ihr instinkthaft wilder Vortrag basiert auf einer Entwicklung, die 2009, zwei Jahre nach ihrem Hochschulabgang, einsetzt. Ausgehend von psychisch-automatischen Kritzeleien, Zeichnungen zum Beispiel, die absichtslos während eines Telefonats nebenher entstehen, entdeckt sie eine fraglos vorhandene, naturgegebene Lebensdynamik, die generell in allen Lebewesen und Dingen steckt und alles mit allem verbindet, gleichsam eine Totalität, in die wir alle ungeachtet unserer spezifischen Erscheinung eingebunden sind. Erstmals hat der französische Philosoph Henri Bergson mit seinem Begriff des „élan vital“ auf diesen, dem gesamten Kosmos innewohnenden Lebendrang hingewiesen und damit dem Surrealismus den entscheidenden geistigen Impuls geliefert. Rainer Beck

„Ich hatte die Idee vom Tempel einer polytheistischen, sinnenfrohen Gegenkultur nach dem Kampf der Geschlechter: post-patriarchalisch und post-feministisch. Die weibliche Sexualität muss nicht mehr verweigert werden, sie wird im Idealfall zweckfrei genossen und gefeiert. Die Göttin ist ihr eigener Tempel, der aus einer wild wuchernden belebten Natur heranwächst. Ein Tempel, der die Weiblichkeit auch auf übersteigerte, ironische Weise feiert.

A slim, muscular body is a central beauty ideal of the present day, which we encounter as a role model in films and advertising. According to this fashionable idea, people should be so trained that their muscles stand out. If this was first true for men, this idea has increasingly reached the female sex as well, with more curves being desired in them again in recent times. Contrary to the delusion of slim-figured femininity, there is thus a small revolt, because fat women (euphemistically called "curvy") are also currently getting a chance in TV shows and segments of advertising. The number of overweight people is simply too large to be completely ignored as market participants.

A lookback to the Late Palaeolithicand the culture of the Gravettian (approx. 35000 to 24000 years before Christ) shows with small sculptures, such as the Venus of Willendorf or the Venus of Hohlefels, that obese, almost fat women appealed to early man better thanthin Twiggy types or well-trained female figures. The reasons for this are presumably to be found in early ideas of fruit beardedness.

The image of women that the sculptor Miriam Lenk conveys to us with her art is therefore one that seems to have fallen out of time, but at the same time has a special future. Her full-bodied women are so overflowing that such opulence can almost be considered a violation of norms and rules. There is simply far too much on these bodies, just as there is on the artist's fantastically twisted, intertwined columnar forms that grow out of themselves. This TOO MUCH of swelling flesh, flab, wrinkles or mutations seems to happen as if by itself and thus seems as unrestrained as it is unlimited. This frightens those (presumably above all men) to whom control means a great deal, and yet it is precisely in this "overflowing of the banks" with all its might that lies first and foremost an expression of irrepressible vitality!

The uninhibited vitality that Miriam Lenk stages in her sculptural work thus contradicts the ideas of self-discipline and control demanded today - and thus also those of fashionable beauty: her voluminous creatures therefore seem to belong to another culture - a culture where goddesses were worshipped and the overflowing was celebrated as life-giving. It is precisely because of such lustful vitality and lack of inhibition, which eludes modern standardization, that Lenk's art touches so deeply that it also irritates.

Lenk orientiert sich nicht am Mainstream, sondern entwickelt ihre Werk auf der Basis von künstlerischer Eigenständigkeit und Eigenwilligkeit. Mit ihrer radikalen Position polarisiert sie, und so teilt sich die Zuschauerschaft in jene, die sich für so viel Fleischeslust begeistern und andere, die sich von den auch Erotik darstellenden Skulpturen mehr weniger erschrocken und brüsk abwenden. In ihrer Kunst begegnet uns mithin eine besondere From der Radikalität. Es ist eine die Grenzen sprengende Kraft, die dadurch entsteht, dass ihre Gestaltungen (und Gestalten) nach individuellen, nicht nach konventionellen Regeln erbaut werden und Form annehmen. Damit entsteht künstlerische Freiheit und Selbstbehauptung, die nicht nach Konformität fragt. Peter Funken

Miriam Lenk Sculptures

„Our view of the individual in Western civilization is obscured by all sorts of ideals: the ascetic body of the ancient athlete, the battered body of Christ, and Mary, the girlish, desexualized mother of God. All this is an expression of an agreement between sensuality, reason and humanity that has been longed for since classical times, and reflects an ideal - reality is not.

The sculptor Miriam Lenk sets as her artistic theme an anti-ideal of humanistic bourgeoisie and places it at the centre of her work. She has created a pleasure image of the human, oscillating between overflowing heaviness and light pleasantness, both engaging and irritating. These voluminous, feminine, swelling formations of her figures appear in a climate of contemporary hostility to the flesh, when the industrious citizen patiently subordinating himself to the fortunes of political events is booming in Europe.

Lenk's figure oscillates between opposites: Heavy and light, smooth and folded, proportioned and at the same time grotesque and mannered. With this interplay, the artist revives the baroque pictorial language and refers to one of the most contradictory epochs. The Baroque is not only the age of overflowing ornamentation, but also one of new beginnings, inventions, philosophy and natural science. This contrast is exemplarily embodied in the courtly baroque art and architecture(...)

Ulrike Pennewitz 2015