Gabi Veit: Creature

The artist uses as her starting point motifs from nature. Leaves or thorns thus frequently grow from handles, spoon heads cleave to resemble pod shapes, and the smooth surfaces become rougher, revealing the veining of leaves or fruit skins.

Such deviations from the basic form, however, have no effect on its function; the boundaries of usability are often very consciously overstepped. The artefacts become artistic objects that well and truly toy with their original function on a formal and symbolic level without actually serving it, for example, in the Laster und Löffel (Vices and Spoons) group of works, which take up the Christian Seven Deadly Sins and match each of the vices with an individual eating utensil: wrath for a thorn spoon or gluttony for an especially bulky one, for instance.

Alongside Gabi Veit’s objects, this richly illustrated monograph presents drawings, photographs from nature and workshop images that showcase the inspiration and production behind the objects and which, like the widely diverse approaches of the texts, afford an open analysis of the Southern Tyrolean artist’s works.

An artist book of sophisticated design. And a poetic homage to an artefact whose apparent self-evidence is brought playfully into question via the sheer inexhaustible wealth of Gabi Veit’s objects.