108 DECORATIVE & DESIGN / PROFILE
design file
JOHANNES HEMANN
A fascination with the forces of nature and a love of the creative process itself provide the drivers behind the organic forms of designer Johannes Hemann.
While notions of nature and natural forces run like fibrous, thematic strands through the work of German designer Johannes Hemann, it is a love of creative process that seems to truly define the pieces he produces.
When invited to take part in the Future Primitives selection at last year’s Interieur show in Kortrijk, Hemann eschewed the standard show-and-tell set-up and instead constructed a miniature, wooden Ferris- wheel loaded with his decorative lighting pieces. Hand-made and hand cranked, the wheel turned the visitor’s role from a purely passive to an interactive, physical one, en- gaging the viewer in the act of understand- ing his work. “It’s true, my work is very often process driven,” Hemann agrees. “Sometimes the way to the result is at least as important as the result itself.”
Among the multifarious pendant’s hanging from Hemann’s wheel, the colourful coral- like forms of Udo and Karl - representa- tives of his Storm Series – were perhaps the clearest example of this approach. Formed inside a specially constructed ‘storm box’, each piece is unique. Small particles of col- oured, synthetic material are blown around an adhesive-covered base structure until a layer has accumulated. A further spray- ing of adhesive is added and the process is repeated, allowing an organic structure to slowly grow. The size of each piece is limited only by the size of the storm box, but Hemann will often call time well before
this point. “More important for me is when I can find different ‘faces’ or ‘aspects’ in the object, when it has reached a complexity that makes the object not only a light, but a light to explore.”
Though the process remains the same, by allowing the natural laws of chaos to contribute, the results are consistently dif- ferent. Within the series, different ranges exist, linked by the type and colour of the synthetic particles used. Each is given a unique name, shared with a contemporary weather system. “During the process, I check the names of the low pressure areas that are circling around the world at the time of production and decide on one them,” Hemann explains. “I never pick the very strong or horrible low pressure areas like Katrina. I would rather people not connect the series to bad storms; I want to show the good forces of the storm, the creative forces, not the destructive ones.” It was ‘process’, again, that provided the hook for Hemann’s next series, Lokta Lights. During a visit to Nepal, he became intrigued by the local production of traditional Lokta paper. He worked with experts in Katmandu to learn the manufacturing process - the layering of pulp onto submerged, fabric mesh frames - and adapted it by using a wire-based structure to create three-di- mensional forms. The result was a series of decorative pieces that, when illuminated, emit a natural, textured glow. Back home, Hemann shifted his focus away from the synthetic structures of the Storm
A variety of synthetic particles in a range of colours used to create Hemann’s Storm Series. An iterative application of adhesive is used to build the pieces inside a special ‘storm box’ that blows particles around, allowing them to accumulate organically. Pieces are named after one of the low pressures systems present at time of crations.
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