At the intersection of industrial rigidity and somatic intuition, the Berlin-based sculptor explores the precarious moment where separate parts become a singular force.
The studio of Thomas Kiesewetter functions as a site of profound chemical and physical translation. It is a space where the ephemeral lightness of paper and cardboard meets the unyielding resistance of industrial sheet metal, and where the frantic energy of an initial idea is eventually stilled into the permanence of cast bronze. For decades, Kiesewetter has occupied a singular position within the landscape of contemporary sculpture, a practitioner who treats the hard-edged language of Constructivism not as a rigid historical doctrine, but as a living, breathing vocabulary for improvisation. His works do not merely sit in a room; they interrogate the space through a series of bends, folds, and precarious balances that seem to defy the very weight of their materials.
Born in Kassel in 1963, a city synonymous with the global avant-garde through the Documenta exhibitions, Kiesewetter grew up in an environment where the stakes of contemporary art were always visible. His practice has since evolved into a sophisticated exploration of how physical objects can hold tension without collapsing into literalism. There is a specific kind of cognitive dissonance at play when viewing a Kiesewetter sculpture: the eye sees the industrial origin of the material, the bolts that pin planes together, the sharp angles of the metal, yet the mind perceives something fundamentally somatic, almost anatomical. The work often feels like a body mid-gesture, arrested in a momentary state of becoming.
In his collaboration with Edition Solenne, this tension is translated into a smaller, more intimate scale. By moving from the large-scale sheet metal constructions that have defined his career toward the meticulous process of lost-wax bronze casting, Kiesewetter invites the viewer to look closer at the grain of his process. The resulting forms are concentrated densities of thought, capturing the spontaneity of his paper prototypes in a medium that suggests geological time. It is a masterclass in the economy of form, where every curve is a considered response to the resistance of the material, and every void is as vital as the metal that surrounds it.
Origins and the Material Impulse
Thomas Kiesewetter’s journey into sculpture is rooted in a fundamental curiosity about how things are put together. Educated at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, he entered the art world during a period when the city was a crucible of experimental making. His early formative years were marked by an engagement with the history of European modernism, though his approach was never purely academic. Instead, he looked at the masters of the twentieth century, such as Picasso’s early metal assemblages or the revolutionary volumes of Tatlin and Rodchenko, through the lens of a contemporary maker who deals in the discarded and the industrial.
The use of industrial materials like sheet metal was not merely a stylistic choice but a philosophical one. In the early 1990s, Kiesewetter began to develop a methodology that allowed him to work quickly and intuitively. He found that by using sheet metal, he could bridge the gap between two-dimensional drawing and three-dimensional objecthood. He could cut, bend, and fold metal with an ease that mimicked the malleability of paper, yet the end result possessed a structural integrity that demanded respect. This duality, the lightness of the concept versus the heavy reality of the material, has remained a central pillar of his practice for over thirty years.
Kiesewetter has often described his relationship with metal as a dialogue of sorts. It is not a material that submits easily to the will of the artist. It fights back, it carries its own history of production, and it possesses a physical memory of the forces applied to it. In his Berlin studio, the sound of the hammer and the flash of the welder are the background noise to a process of constant negotiation. He does not start with a grand blueprint; instead, he begins with hundreds of small parts, scraps of cardboard or snippets of metal, and begins to arrange them until a certain 'moment' occurs, a moment where the parts stop being fragments and start being a cohesive whole.
The Practice: Between Chaos and Coherence
The broader oeuvre of Thomas Kiesewetter is characterized by a playful yet rigorous engagement with the formal possibilities of the curve and the plane. His sculptures often appear as if they are held together by a single, miraculous thread of logic, even when their construction is overtly mechanical. By leaving the bolts and seams visible, he demystifies the sculptural process, inviting the viewer into the history of the work’s making. This transparency is a hallmark of his practice, a refusal to hide the labor or the 'stubbornness' of his materials behind a seamless finish.
Exhibited globally, from the Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin to galleries across New York and London, Kiesewetter’s work has been lauded for its ability to breathe new life into the tradition of abstract sculpture. His pieces often feature bold, monochromatic palettes, vibrant yellows, deep blues, or stark reds that serve to unify the complex geometric planes. However, this use of color is never merely decorative; it is a structural tool used to define space and direct the eye through the labyrinthine folds of the metal. The color acts as a skin that identifies the sculpture as a singular entity, separate from the industrial environment it might otherwise resemble.
In recent years, his focus has shifted toward the relationship between the viewer's body and the sculptural object. He is intensely interested in how a sculpture changes as one moves around it. A Kiesewetter work is never the same from two different angles; a form that looks like a solid wall from the front might dissolve into a series of thin ribbons when viewed from the side. This kinetic quality requires the viewer to be active, to walk, to crouch, and to engage in a physical dialogue with the work. It is an exploration of the subjective nature of perception, where coherence is something granted by the mind of the observer rather than a fixed quality of the object itself.
References and Influences
To understand Kiesewetter is to understand his conversation with the ghosts of art history. He is a child of the 20th century, drawing deeply from the Cubist revolution and the subsequent explorations of the Russian Constructivists. One can see the echoes of Naum Gabo’s linear constructions or the rhythmic vitality of Julio González’s iron sculptures in his work. However, Kiesewetter strips away the utopian political aspirations of the early modernists, replacing them with a more personal, idiosyncratic approach to form.
His influences are not limited to the visual arts. He is inspired by the rough-hewn aesthetics of industrial architecture, the structural logic of bridges, and the functional beauty of machinery. Yet, there is also an organic undercurrent that traces back to the sculptures of Hans Arp or the biomorphic abstractions of Henry Moore. This synthesis of the machine-made and the biological gives his work its peculiar vitality. It feels like a piece of industrial debris that has somehow grown into an organism.
Metal seems to me like a stubborn interlocutor.
This notion of the 'stubborn interlocutor' is central to Kiesewetter’s philosophy. He does not view his materials as passive recipients of his genius. Instead, he sees the metal as an active participant in the creation of the work. The metal has its own limits, its own snapping points, and its own ways of reflecting light. By working with these constraints rather than against them, he achieves a sense of authenticity that is rare in contemporary sculpture. The work is a record of a struggle, a physical manifestation of the artist’s attempt to find harmony within a chaotic world.
In Conversation: The Art of Rolling the Dice
In numerous interviews and studio visits, Kiesewetter has articulated a process that balances high-stakes precision with a willingness to embrace the accidental. He famously constructs massive quantities of paper and cardboard models as a preliminary stage. This phase is characterized by a rapid, almost frantic pace of production, where he tests hundred of different configurations. There is a specific kind of freedom in paper; it allows for a speed of thought that metal cannot accommodate.
He often uses the metaphor of gambling to describe his creative act. He has remarked that the process is like rolling the dice, you choose to roll them, but afterward, you do not control the outcome. This surrender of total control is essential to his aesthetic. He is not interested in creating a perfectly finalized, homogenous object that exists in a vacuum. Rather, he is searching for that fleeting moment when individual, disparate parts come together to form something that 'works' in a way he could not have predicted at the outset.
This interest in the limit of coherence is what gives his work its 'off-kilter' quality. He wants the viewer to feel that the sculpture could, at any moment, fall apart back into its constituent pieces. It is this precariousness that creates tension. When walking around a piece, the viewer experiences a 'fall apart of this coherence' as the mind struggles to map the complex intersections of curves and lines. For Kiesewetter, the work is successful when it captures the precise moment of that coming together, the exact second before the logic of the object collapses.
It’s not about creating a finalized homogenous and coherent object; it’s about capturing the moment when the individual parts come together.
The Works with Edition Solenne
The primary work released with Edition Solenne, titled 'Untitled' (2021), represents a significant distillation of Kiesewetter’s sculptural concerns. Measuring 22.5 x 12 x 10 cm, this dark grey patinated bronze object is a concentrated exploration of volume and void. While many of his larger works utilize the graphic power of bright paint, here Kiesewetter allows the material of the bronze and the subtlety of the patina to take center stage. The result is a work of 'timeless elegance' that brings the intricate details of his hand-guided process into sharp focus.
This piece began as a direct translation of the artist’s hand, captured in a flexible mould from an original prototype. In this smaller scale, the viewer can see the nuances of the 'handmade quality' that Kiesewetter prizes. The way a curve terminates, the subtle variation in the thickness of a plane, and the rhythmic arrangement of the geometric parts are all preserved through the meticulous lost-wax casting process. This method, executed by the famed Fonderia Artistica Mariani in Italy, ensures that the 'same surface, weight, and gravity' of the artist’s original are hardened into a permanent alloy.
The dark grey patina is particularly crucial to the reading of this work. Unlike the industrial paints used in his sheet metal works, this patina is a chemical reaction achieved through heat and chemistry, applied by hand to each individual edition. It gives the bronze a depth and a varied luster that changes as the viewer moves around the sculpture. The patina highlights the 'tabletop Cubist' quality of the piece, turning the assembly of geometric components into a singular, unified form that feels rooted in the history of modern abstraction while remaining firmly contemporary.
In 'Untitled', Kiesewetter manages to convey a sense of 'spontaneous pieces' despite the highly controlled nature of bronze casting. The work retains the energy of its initial construction, looking as though it were intuitively combined in a single sitting. To own an edition from this series is to hold a 'physical record of the hand that made it', a piece of art that will, as the collection description notes, outlast everyone who touches it. It is a work that invites the observer to delve into the subtleties of contemporary Constructivism, offering a different path toward abstraction that is as much about human intuition as it is about geometric rigor.
The fabrication of 'Untitled' at Fonderia Artistica Mariani adds a layer of heritage to the project. Established in 1952, the foundry is renowned for its precision and its ability to capture the finest surface details through traditional vacuum-shell methods. Each of the 30 editions (plus 4 Artist's Proofs) undergoes a rigorous process of chasing and assembly, where seams are removed by hand so the metal reads as a continuous, fluid surface. This high level of craftsmanship ensures that the 'dark grey patinated bronze' truly embodies the essence of the artist’s vision, bridging the gap between a raw studio experiment and a museum-quality object.
Closing: The Gravity of Choice
Thomas Kiesewetter’s work reminds us that abstraction is never truly 'clean' or detached from the world. Instead, it is a messy, physical, and deeply human endeavor. Through his collaboration with Edition Solenne, the Berlin-based artist has allowed us to see his practice through a different lens, one that emphasizes the weight and permanence of bronze while retaining the fleeting magic of his paper origins. His sculptures are not just objects; they are questions posed to the space they inhabit.
Whether on the scale of a public monument or a tabletop bronze, Kiesewetter’s work continues to challenge the boundaries between the industrial and the organic. He remains an artist who is unafraid of his materials, willing to engage with the 'stubbornness' of metal to find a moment of peace. Each work is a testament to the belief that through the act of building, folding, and joining, we can find a temporary coherence in a world that is always in motion.
