Acts of Light 

Annette Sauermann is neither a painter nor a builder of objects, although she pursues both
activities. At the beginning of her artistic career, the light artist also hand-drew constructions.
A lot earlier, she also used to paint. A new vocabulary is needed to describe her work, which
includes light-and-shadow images, large and small wall reliefs. She also creates light sculp-
tures, light spaces, light stores and light drums. For more than three decades the artist has
excelled as a self-proclaimed catcher of light. She could also be called a trap-setter, because
she succeeds in luring light over very heavy material into traps and directing it to where it can
put on a “show” – by day as well as by night.

You can’t escape the light, says Sauermann rejoicing. Because light is everything to her – raw
material, stimulation and propellant. In unbelievable acts of strength, the artist layers concre-
te slabs on top of one another to form towers and draws delicate bridges made of layers of
the finest paper in between. In the past she used tracing paper, today it is light filter foils that
look similar but are more durable.

Her object of investigation appears only superficially visible, it is the effect and refractive
power of light, also its luminous colours. On a further level, she adds abstract poetry to her
work – as can be seen to great effect in the new group of light transformers. These are fluore-
scent discs, between which an unearthly beautiful shimmer emerges. Depending on the time
of day and the incidence of light, its own kind of rainbow cautiously appears.

How light is dark, and at what point does the dark turn into light? How does light increase and
how does it become the sum of its natural colours? What roles do shadow and transparency
play? Sauermann is a researcher who experiments tirelessly. In spite of all the systematic
exploration of the phenomenology of light, she does not want to accept limits, but, rather,
fearlessly go beyond them. It starts with the physical strength that she has to apply when
laying concrete, for example, and runs through the entire work process. The works are also
weighty in thought, which luckily you can’t tell by looking at them.

Where her artist colleagues use coloured foils, paints, lacquers, aluminium and fibreboard,
the light artist uses concrete, dichroic glass, tracing and emery paper, marking strips and
coloured, frosted perspex, all requiring extensive preparation. When the glass has been fitted,
natural colours are offset with applied colours. It is light itself that continues to rule absolute.
In another work, fluorescent perspex sheets pass through a concrete construction, lit with
ultra violet light. The sheets become membranes, continuing to illuminate beyond the onset
of darkness.
Sauermann constructs smaller works for the wall, which she calls “archi-sculptures”. These
illuminated experimental boxes are a type of relief, demonstrating how light and shadow be-
have in stone. For the artist this represents a release of tension as she marries heavy physical
structures with subtle colour and light phenomena.

As with Balzer and Bodde, Sauermann’s artistic path has started a direction of reminiscence,
of reflection or a return. At the beginning of her career, lightweight, rigid paper creations were
her trademark. The first light traps comprised paper vessels as high as houses. Sauermann
strives for “release” again today. She may perhaps dispense with concrete and use material
that doesn’t weigh as much. We receive the gift of light daily. Thus she will continue to trans-
form light, keeping it at her work’s core. Annette Sauermann’s favourite colour is light.

Annette Bosetti
Arts journalist

Excerpt from The catalog „Dieter Balzer Object/ Nicholas Bodde Painting / Annette Sauermann Sculpture“ Kunstraum Villa Friede Bonn, 2021