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Ina Weber (born 1964 in Diez/Lahn, lives in Berlin, professor at the UDK) frequently devotes her sculptural works to architecture and everyday objects, placing them in new contexts. Using concrete or clay, she creates significantly scaled-down replicas of existing high-rise buildings, Chinese restaurants, bus shelters, advertising signs, flower pots, trash cans, and much more. The handmade elements always remain recognizable as such. Her mostly colored models appear somewhat softer and more amorphous than their real counterparts. She forces the viewer to engage in a new and different way with the object and its form. These often involve architecture and objects whose specific use or special design were crucial for a particular era and have become firmly anchored in society’s collective memory of forms. For example, the typical miniature golf course, which became fashionable in post-war Germany as a harmless pastime.
In her first edition for Provinz, “Stammtischashtray,” Ina Weber combines two set pieces. An extremely scaled-down and stylized castle ruin sits enthroned on its hill in the center of a life-size ashtray, a regular’s table type. Due to widespread smoking bans and the trend toward healthy living, such an ashtray is now an anachronism. We associate the regular’s table with conviviality, a place where like-minded people meet, discuss, and drink. Here, strict rules apply, and populism flourishes. Foreigners and dissidents must stay out.
“Whereas the subversive, cutting, and snarky joke of Martin Kippenberger—once Weber’s professor in Kassel—emerges from the steel bath of postwar silence, Weber’s humor originated more in the concrete tub of progress: dripping viscous, but persistent.”
(Dominikus Müller, in: Frieze d/e, Issue 9, April – May 2013)
Ina Weber’s handmade ceramic “Stammtischashtray” is being produced in an edition of 19 (14 for Provinz, 5 artist’s proofs) and in as many different colored glazes, priced at €750 (approximately 100 packs of cigarettes).
Photos: Ludger Paffrath
