ULI AIGNER NOW REPRESENTED BY ATO VISION

Since: July 1, 2024

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Reaching into the future - Concrete visions from Uli Aigner

Essay by Norina Quinte

Uli Aigner, born in Austria in 1965, is one of the most impressive personalities on the contemporary art scene. Why?

Through her multi-layered works, which represent, if not demand, a symbiosis of traditional craftsmanship and innovative digital technology, she creates a multifaceted reflection on temporality and artistic form. Her work is characterized by a deep understanding of craftsmanship and the design possibilities of the future.

After completing an apprenticeship as a potter and then studying product design in Vienna (until 1990), digital image design at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy (until 1993) and additional training in 3D animation (1997-1998), Aigner integrates both analog and digital tools into her artistic practice. Aigner worked on linking multimedia approaches and different art forms as a visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich (2002-2003) as well as curatorially between 2006-2010 as director of the Städtische Kunsthalle Munich. Since 2011, the artist has devoted herself primarily to her own production at her "One Million Zentrale" (OMZB) in Berlin.

The "One Million" project is exemplary of Aigner's artistic approach. Her work, which is based on the idea of hand-turning a million porcelain vessels that take on a variety of forms from different historical eras, among other things, illustrates her fascination with temporality and the endless facets of design. However, the production of "One Million" is not the sole responsibility of Aigner: since 2014 (when "Item No.1" was created), these vessels have only found their form through intensive exchange with discussion partners, creating a fascinating interplay between dialog, the present day and traditional craftsmanship. Owners of Aigner's vessels inscribe themselves into the artwork by adding them to the artist's archive/"One Million Ordnungssystem" and on a publicly accessible world map (www.one-million.world). They themselves become part of the "One Million" network. With a "lifetime guarantee", the artist takes her experiment to the extreme and assigns the greatest possible value to each individual object due to its planned "indestructibility".

Through her project, the artist confronts not only the impossibility of producing such a large quantity herself, but also her own mortality. The creation of an artificial intelligence to carry on her knowledge and perspective is an assertion to overcome the limits of time and leave behind an artistic process that reaches beyond her own physical power of production to remain tangible as an aesthetic form. In addition to her appreciation of traditional craftsmanship and the uniqueness of each individual piece, the act of turning porcelain refers in particular to the artist's own reassurance about her physical "being in the world". At the same time, she plunges fearlessly into the non-physical world of artificial intelligence and digital tools. This synthesis of tradition and innovation lends her works a unique dynamism and relevance.

The choice of materials plays a decisive role in Aigner's work. Porcelain, for example, the densest of all ceramic materials, has a rich history. From Limoges in France (where Aigner's material also comes from) to the Far Eastern dynasties, porcelain has a unique tradition. Uli Aigner challenges the limits of this material by taking it to dimensions that previously seemed unimaginable. In 2017, in collaboration with the potters in Jingdezhen, China (the world capital of porcelain), she created the world's largest porcelain vessel to date, "Item 3501", with a height of 240 cm.

Based on this haptic experience, Aigner also transcends the artisanal tradition in another work and expands her practice with the help of digital image production. In 2023, in collaboration with filmmaker Michal Kosakowski, she created a remarkable series of AI-generated images in which she scaled her porcelain vessels into larger-than-life forms and placed them in landscapes and public spaces after manually labeling her vessels with slogans. (Title of the accompanying publication: "BE SILENT TOUCH LOOK SWALLOW", Kosakowski Books, 2023). These images invite us to reflect on the impact of such monumental vessels in public space, while at the same time blurring the boundaries between real and artificial dimensions. Only through digital intervention can Aigner point to the potential of artistic intervention and its impact in relation to space and society.

Earlier works by Aigner also address the effects of various spatial and social dimensions on her art. In her series "Die Keimzelle des Staates" (The nucleus of the state) in the early 2000s, she deals intensively with her own role as a mother of four and the family unit in large-format colored pencil drawings, among other things. In an interview with the Kunstforum International (2006), Uli Aigner commented on the classic role conflict of women, namely combining family and career, as follows: "Family is not just work. The family takes care of me, just as I take care of them. Through my work, I try to create a reality of production derived from the present reality of life." This production reality means making people aware that all social and professional tasks are always interwoven. "For me, there are no self-contained roles, only a permanent simultaneity."

In 2004, Aigner also questioned her own lifeworld and the influence on her work as an artist in her social sculpture "Ghostprofessur Jennifer" (which later became the "Ghost Academy"), in which she examined the artistic influence of students on their lecturers. By reversing the student-teacher relationship, Aigner conceptually illuminated the value of learning and the associated established institutional structures and hierarchies. These approaches are an expression of her ability to address contemporary issues and themes and to build a powerful, poetic bridge through her art.

Such bridges can be found in all of Aigner's works. They merge form and time, reality and vision, craft and technology. Her art opens up new perspectives and enables us to think beyond supposed boundaries (status quo). They embody the artistic vision of a future that arises from both the courage to create something new and a connection with the past. According to Aigner, this would be the lived "permanent simultaneity".