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Lisa Stybor
Lisa Stybor in Berlin May 2010
One paint brush in a stroke can create already amazing images. That is life like a duck which lands on the water and then glides still a bit further. Like the brush it leaves on the water surface a traces of tiny waves. Art is always close to truthful observations of reality and specifically of what goes on in nature. Lisa Stybor made such observations when she visited Indians in British Columbia, Canada and discovered there the method of the caliography.
In her exceptional way of linking art to life around her, Lisa Stybor undertakes not only art as research, but as a kind of exploration. In a discussion during the exhibition opening under the title "The Song of Haida Gwaii" in reference to these Indians she validated with ethnologist Thomas Hauschild her knowledge that these Indians in British Columbia had indeed linkages in the past to China. She sensed that affinity and brought it out on paper by this technique of the caliography. It is a well known equally powerful expression in China. It is an art to let the brush swoop over the paper to leave behind traces. The letters stand out because they dance in the light and reveal a still greater wisdom once the ink has dried. Such an expression goes further than what can be phantomed at first sight.
Out of this experience in Canada she has continued to develop caliography to create images with one stroke of the paint brush. A flow of lines translates itself more and more into all kinds of movements of not only a bear or of a duck, but of a dancer and of people.
In two exhibitions in 2009 she showed these works separately: in the one under the title "The Song of Haida Gwaii" in reference to the Indians reflections of her work in Canada and in the other a series of a dancer or of people going through various movements. The latter she showed in the "Buchkeller" - book cellar located vis a vis where she lives on Carmerstreet in Berlin-Charlottenburg. That place is well known for its literary evenings. Every Thursday someone is invited to read something and thus a most appropriate place to exhibit such work.
She knows spaces and materials do not always go well together. Hence often she rearranges them to obtain another perception, vision and viewpoint. All that runs usually together in her case in a single line. It is a soft spoken line, but one which gathers strength as it continues or is elongated to express something unique, something particular, something special.
As professor for art at the University of Bauhaus in Dessau she taught students of architecture 1997 until 2005. In her courses she continues this exploration with students by letting them do projects within a certain space e.g. a canyon at the bottom of which runs a river. The moment a bridge is added or some tents along the river bank, space is altered. This experimental approach to changes affecting a landscape can be easily linked to the concerns of geographers and cultural anthropologist. Unfortunately a lot of negative things are happening to cultural landscapes throughout the world. For instance Theano Terkenli, Professor at the University of the Aegean and expert on cultural landscapes, emphasizes too few people acknowledge that their interactions with any piece of land will alter the landscape. That can relate as well to the activities of ecospace artists who wish to address climate change as a world wide issue. Lisa Stybor is aware about these issues and related artistic activities but her prime concern is to communicate to students a sense of aesthetics. She is of the opinion that they should not relinquish their artistic aspiration. That means they should try to express something truthful within a given space and time.
An example of this approach can be taken from her after thoughts after having given following course:
DRAWING INSIDE/OUTSIDE - After-thoughts
Workshop 7.-11.02.05 by students of landscapes and Prof. Lisa M. Stybor, Hochschule Anhalt in Dessau, Germany ( follower of the BAUHAUS-School )
This workshop was about to develop and refine perception, phantasy and – if possible – a personal („modern“?) approach towards the subject.
About 12 students participated, beginners and advanced students.
They were very active people, and they worked hard.
The subject „Urban Landscape Drawing“ set high expectations.
This is usually not a course for „beginners“, but several students didn’t have any or almost no experience in drawing.
Nevertheless I think it was a very valuable time for all; the students got an idea what drawing can mean and how difficult it is.
Just the time was very short.
An intensive training in drawing helps to develop a more differentiated perception, which also means feeling for people, objects, environment....and leads to a more precise memory.
To ‚develop perception’ refers in the beginning of a drawing course to visual elements, like form, space, colour, composition, light and shadow, but slowly a differentiation can – simultaneously - grow in feeling and understanding of the single figure, the situation, the context, of the atmosphere, also on an abstract level.
Yes, I think a long intense studying of drawing can support thinking in general.
One perceives -from a situation- a more and more wider context in one moment.
Because of this – judgements, combinations and conclusions become complex with the time. When perception grows, it becomes finer in structure, like a net, and in the same moment the inner space of a person, spirit and soul, can grow, like an inner non visible organism . All of a sudden there is a continuous about the richness of the creation, the whole person changes, becomes differentiated and more mature.
Lisa M.Stybor, (Prof., MfA)
That evaluation of what impact drawing can have on perception says a lot about Lisa Stybor. She is like a poetic philosopher in the arts. She loves to articulate her questions in time and in public, as well as in-between spaces and time. To her it is impossible to conceive something without giving it time and space to find its way. It is like the river who must find the way to the ocean.
Sensitive as she is, she needs her own reclusive reference point more often to be found not merely in a studio but at home, in the kitchen and in what is her immediate surounding.
She knows no reluctance to use as communication tool to make her works be known a webpage. While willing to go public, she needs also to withdraw in order to understand all that what is having an impact upon her. Often she would say before withdrawing, 'das wird mir jetzt zuviel' - that is becoming too much for me!
Her withdrawal is not permanent. She is a person fully engaged in society and therefore responsive to the needs of others. As far as she has the capacity to respond, she will do so and this in an often surprising way. She will come up suddenly with an idea which might alleviate the person from the specific problem even though before that eruption of idea no one could have noticed that this question was preoccupying her.
As a person who has lived for ten years in Dessau and then decided to return to Berlin in order to live there she commutes now during the week to Dessau (by train it takes two hours). Given her background and experience she is prone to understand German re-unification and what problems that has created for people of former East Germany. These problems are fundamental. Her key insight is that once people have lost their basic orientation, they cannot be helped any longer. That may explain the deep down despair of those living in the East and why former East Germany is experiencing shrinking cities. In the case of Dessau a huge budgetary deficit has given momentum to the prospect of having to close down the theatre. It is one of its very few cultural venues (besides the Bauhaus building where the university is located). Germany faces in 2010 a crisis which affects many people and institutions in various ways at first more hidden but are becoming more pronounced as harsh measures need to be taken to align state, regional and municipal budgets all right now deep in the red. Simply said nothing has retained any self evident dimension and this cultural crisis affects Lisa Stybor very profoundly. She engages herself to save the cultural life in Dessau. It would be disasterous if the theatre in Dessau would be closed.
Altogether the life and work of Lisa reflects the difficulties to combine artistic and teaching experiences nowadays. As professor for the arts she has witnessed how university reform has transformed the landscape of higher education and not everything is positive in her opinion. Above all there is a lack of responsiveness in the system to both the new needs of students but also what they need to learn if they are to become really good artists or architects. Substantial knowledge is never self understand and requires time and effort, in short some crucial investments which means the professor has to be willing to go out of his or her way to communicate that special discipline. It goes without saying in few of the tradition of the Bauhaus that this teaching much convey ideas in a most innovative and far reaching way. Once that becomes a capacity, artistic abilities can let ideas about doing things converge and bring about a new cultural synthesis. For that education needs to be an open field for further going experiences.
An interesting escape from too much misery and only frustrating experiences is for Lisa Stybor to seek the silence of monasteries in Italy, preferable on Sicily. Thus it would be very interesting to know her maps and where she found a way to live with local people as she would be curious enough to stop and ask questions. She would pick up small pieces of evidence and take it home with her. They end up on the kitchen wall to remind of not necessarily secretive places but of locations where a small item in the sense of Bachelard would reveal such a poetic space with many light years inside so as to show to the mind as inquisitive as that of Lisa's a hyperbolic construction of a beautiful world existing but not perceived in a life marked by haste and futile engagement in things which do not matter in the end. As a matter of fact she would denote how much money is spend on futile things when it could be spend on much more worthwhile things. She sighs at this point for she knows the potentiality of art to do great things and experiences herself as artist and professor of art how little of that is realized in a world structured towards the media and newest technology but without having any footing in human experiences.
Any artist reveals secrets when showing as well where materials are gathered. In the case of Picasso it was all sorts of objects including bicycle handle bars. Once he picked them up, he transformed that into a bull's horn. In the case of Lisa Stybor she turns her attention to what Bachelard calls the poetic spaces revealed by sea shells and all kinds of fossils.
Fossil collection of Lisa Stybor
While involved in this search for ideas, she knows as artist there is the much wider responsibility in a society which is made up of people who are filled with fear due to being forgotten by others. Artists should give orientation, perspectives and hope that things can be altered. To do that it is her belief that people need to gain strength. They can do so out of learning but that is only possible by assuming self-responsibility. Only then the situation can be changed. As artist she wishes to convey through all her art works such strength and conviction in the human capacity to learn and to express strong, equally good ideas.
Hatto Fischer 24.5.2010
Link to the website of Lisa Stybor:
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