Especially in winter we notice how important light is to us. Skyscraper blocks rise out of the fields, sparkling and alienated, when you come from the country to the city. Light has always been fascinating: without light, there is no life, no warmth and no art. But a special light shines on the passers-by who pass the Zehlendorfer Haus am Waldsee. Since 2019, the installation “Sturm und Drang” has been located on the right and left of the post of the garden portal, two artfully tangled structures made of colored neon tubes. It comes from Susanne Rottenbacher.
Light is the main medium of the Berlin artist, with all its different qualities. “A special quality of light in the visual arts is that there is something democratic about it,” she says. “It is the opposite of conceptual art, for which an explanation is often necessary in order to understand it.” Her art enables a direct experience, for every age group. Rottenbacher’s art does not exclude, it embraces.
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Because light has a positive connotation. The 52-year-old noticed people who work with light, whether they are artists or lighting planners, they are particularly sensitive to this material, which can also have an aggressive effect. It is no coincidence that light is a symbol of rule or power.
If you visit Rottenbacher in her studio, it is surprisingly dark there at first, a staircase leads to a high room with a wood-paneled ceiling. Everything looks warm, her works are the only source of light. Like a ball of lightning, “Lux Serpentinata 01” discharges into the room, almost alive, as if it were twisting. The work is inspired by the serpentine twisted, wrestling figures of Mannerism. Here it is tubes filled with light that twist and turn.
Light can occupy space
Rottenbacher’s works seem to be alive, they are in dialogue with the surrounding space and change it, reinterpret it. As in the natural environment, there is never the same light, the same time of day or time of year. They change over the years. In their movement they seem to pause as if in a snapshot, as if the stop button had been pressed at a dance event and everyone froze.
“Light can occupy space. There are reflections, it is illuminated, ”Rottenbacher describes the phenomenon. She calls her art writing into the room with light. Photography and sculpture would remain trapped, she explains the difference. But with light you always experience surprises when the effect of the work changes.
Born in Göttingen, Rottenbacher already knew as a child that she would not stay there. She has always had a passion for interior design and wanted to be a set designer. A year before graduating from high school, she studied every evening in bed for entrance exams to foreign universities. It worked. In 1988 she began her studies at Columbia University in New York. “Manhattan was still very brutal back then,” she recalls. “But I was surrounded by great people who gave everything.”
She does the lighting design for the Chancellery
During her studies she soon noticed that she was more interested in structuring space with light instead of built matter – “it has such great emotional power”. So she decided to study light for another year at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning in London. After returning to Germany, she worked as a set designer at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and in 1997 she worked for the Berlin company “Licht Kunst Licht” for four years, where she worked on the lighting design for the Federal Chancellery and other government buildings. She has been a freelance light artist since 2007, and has since received numerous grants and prizes.
The same radiant power as in her work also emanates from her as a person. For Rottenbacher, role models are people who assert themselves with their ideas and remain loving to deal with. At the theater she is fascinated by Robert Wilson, who created sensational productions for her with the lighting designer Jennifer Tipton. In art there are positions as diverse as James Turrell, Dan Flavin or Maurizio Nannucci, even if their own work is far from their minimalism.
Her book “Radiationen” has just been published by DCV with contributions from Katja Blomberg, the long-time director of Haus am Waldsee, and Berlin curator Mark Gisbourne (100 pages, € 44). Of course, “Lily Pond” is also depicted in it, which shines at the Swarovski Crystal Worlds in Innsbruck. Only the works from the exhibition “Jupiter and Io, 2.0” planned for the end of January at the Martina Kaiser gallery in Cologne are missing. They keep shining.
