Just like the blank sheet of paper, Lore Bert's paper works offer the opportunity to realize very different ideas. And since the Mainz artist has a humanistic education, has traveled widely and has a wide range of interests, it is not surprising that she also studied the writings of Immanuel Kant.
In 1998 she produced the epochal triptych Transcendental Aesthetics for her exhibition in Seoul in the same year. As a result – and increasingly after the turn of the millennium – she produced a whole group of her popular transparent works with quotations from the author of the Critique of Pure Reason. For the fragile banners, the now 85-year-old carefully writes on small paper bags and then fills them with soft cotton wool to make small pillows, which she then connects to form a larger surface. The paper virtuoso places a special focus on text passages that deal with human perception.
Lore Bert is a meticulous and perfectionist artist. In her artist biography, Walking Through a Life on page 82, she writes about an artist who creates tons of drawings only to throw away most of them:
I could never work like this! I strive to improve each of my works until it meets my expectations.«
So it is not surprising that it did not stop with the Kant banners. First at the University of Bayreuth, but later also in the United Arab Emirates, she showed an environment called Kant: Time and Space, for which she attached fantastically light spheres made of delicate paper to almost invisible threads on the ceiling of the exhibition space. She then labeled the spheres, looking like a planetary model, in blue with the quotes from the Königsberg philosopher that she likes so much. The latest installation of this ›family‹ can currently be admired in the Cadoro – Center for Art and Science in Mainz as part of the exhibition Traces of Memory - Signs of the Present until December 20, 2021.
One of the earliest works that Lore Bert dedicated to the texts of Immanuel Kant is actually the transparent diptych I feel - I think from 1988. In just four words, she sums up a central idea of the philosopher. In 2018, when she created an extensive cycle of works with Egyptian papyrus and delicate Japanese paper*, the papyrus work I feel - I think (after Kant) came into existence, which connects to her early work.
* documented in the wonderful publication Papyruscollagen 2015-2018
But Lore Bert’s art is on show all over the world at the moment. If you happen to be in Mallorca (Spain) oder St. Louis, Missouri (USA), you should not miss her solo exhibitions in Galería Roy and Atrium Gallery respectively. See information above the english text for more details.