121 Millimeter

In my garden a stone is standing with the title "Interior 5" from Lioba Abrell, as a separate and independent part of a set. I see it every day, during the seasons with all the changes. An erratic block from the foothills of the Alps ended up in front of my front door in the Schwalm. Being worked through the glaciers of the ice age, heavy and round - broken through by exact drillings with 42 mm wide drill holes around the whole stone. With these drills the erratic block got hollowed and there are still lying drill hearts inside.

This artistic intervention makes from the heavy stone something light, tansparent and floating. Light is falling through and makes it translucent. But also the earth conquers it and changes it. Grass, danelions and daisies are growing through the holes and through the whole stone. Children are putting branches and flowers into the stone. The slight abolition and change of the material is one principle in the continuation of art from Lioba Abrell.

Another priciple is like the range, which she also carried out in her work 100X. 100X picks up the intention of my stone. Smaller stones from the river "Iller", in different sizes, are like the larger stones, a result of nature. The Iller, once a wild mountain river, has formed from the Alp-stones smaller Iller-stones. By single drills, the nature formed intense power of the stones is broken. Broken through, with light and air running inside and outside again. Because of the range of these stones in always new possibilities, Lioba Abrell gives the individual now separated stones the possibilitiy to communicate new, and with the pervious energy to grow together to a new personal existence.

In the now realized work "121 Millimeter" in Erolzheim are distributed 10 erratic blocks in the whole place. The stones are provided with two drills at a time, which are meeting together in the middle of the stone. The size of the drill is 121 mm. Through the positioning of the stones and the drills there develops a net from rays of light, real and imaginary.

The stones ( actually inanimate ) can now, through the artistic intervention, enter into contact. And that way, the visitor can recognize, understand and walk through this communication. The work of art also contributes to the communication of the visitors among each other. The energy, through the stones at their position in the place, also transfers directly to the visitor. He has to walk, he has to look, and he is allowed to see and can recognize.

Dr. Anton Merk

100 X

The well rounded stones from the river Iller, the artist Lioba Abrell uses for her work 100 X, are the result of natures activity. As vagabonds in a permanently changing riverbed they lost in years and decades their sharp edges as fragments. The continual power of nature had formed them, deformed or hurt. The artist takes up the energy of the nature and is going the laborious way of transformation from something given to something made. She constructs drill holes into the riverstones and because of that, she allows a view,witch is leading into the stones material and offers the secret interior.

The holed stones make thoughts of chicken gods, witch you can find at the beaches of the East- and Northern Sea. Stones, with washed out chalk or fossil filling, are saving, in the belief of folklore, from the thread spinnig and blustering Kikimora, who is frighting the poultry as a ghost.

Holes in a stone must irritate us human beings, however, stone is the symbol for resistance and longlife in contrary to the human fragile existence. May be, that the rationalization of the reconnaissance had superimposed the idea from geting lost ghosts. None the less, it is the vacancy in the stone, witch attracts attention. Because the artist does not, in the classical sculptural way, working a form out of the raw material, but shifts her sculptural working to the inside of the stone. With pearcing the stones and the careful removing of the material she is creating sculptures of "nothing", which became visible for the viewer only through their edges.

The stones are witnesses in the river of the things, which defy persistant the waters, passing at them. The holes let the light into the stones and cause a ribbon, the shine of them, who knows.

Kathrin Rost and Dr. Martin Scharvogel
Translation: Ken Moseley