LithoMania

Book / Arnoldsche UteEitzenhöfer Catalogues

Published: 18.01.2022

Text by:: Claudia Banz, Ute Eitzenhöfer, Julia Wild, Wilhelm Lindemann

Edited by:: Arnoldsche Art Publishers

Edited at:: Stuttgart

Edited on:: 2022

Technical data:: 16 x 24 cm, 200 Abb., Softcover Deutsch / Englisch

ISBN / ISSN:: ISBN 9783897906600

Price:: from 28 €

Order:: 20% Discount for Klimt02 members
Order:: Arnoldsche Art Publishers

Inner pages.

Rare stones -whether part of a collection or processed into small sculptures and jewels- have fascinated people for thousands of years. They trigger longings and even prompt criminal activity. Their extraction causes bloody conflicts, but at the same time, the trading and processing of stones bring together people from the most remote regions of the world.

In LithoMania students at the Idar-Oberstein Campus confront these ambivalent imperatives. As part of the exhibition series Design Lab at the Kunstgewerbemuseum [Museum of Decorative Arts] in Berlin, the students present their deliberations on this profound material in objects, drawings, photographs, and texts. The sketch-like documentation visualises the process and restores a lightness to the material that enables new approaches and a freedom of artistic expression.

Stone collections, small sculptures, jewels made of precious stones fascinate people, trigger desires. Greed and criminal acts are derived from them. The extraction of gemstones destroys landscapes and is the cause of bloody conflicts. On the other hand, trade and processing of stones have brought people from the most remote regions of the world together for thousands of years and are an occasion for exchange and further development. The identity of a social community can be anchored in individual, special stones. They are considered sacred or are part of objects that are important in identity-constituting rites. While gemstones used to be accessible only to a few, today they have become easily consumable mass products. Nevertheless, for many people, the properties of the stones, their patterning, colour, hardness, enable them to gain symbolic access to the material through sensual perception, to a world of ideas and imagination that often evokes a deep emotional bond.

LithoMania is a state that exists everywhere and nowhere in this world, where the most diverse people come together who have one thing in common: a fascination for stone. Because stone is not a dead material for them, but a purpose in life.
/Julia Wild