Since the sixties, Vera Röhm has brought together different materials, such as metal, stone, wood and Perspex, to form sculptures that always follow the dictates of geometry and constructive principles.

In the mid-seventies she embarked on a group of works called Ergänzungen [Integrations] which also includes the sculpture Doppelergänzung [Double Integration] from 2009. The slender stele with its square cross-section set on a square metal base has been made with technical finesse: the surfaces are smooth and the Perspex exactly fits the broken, splintery end of the elmwood beam. In this piece, precision machining has been teamed with the caprices of nature: Vera Röhm hit on the idea of integrating broken wood with Perspex in 1975 while walking through a forest that had been ravaged by a storm, leaving a large number of badly damaged trees and snapped branches.

In her Ergänzungen, two complementary materials are fused together to create a permanent union. Just as placing complementary colours directly beside one another mutually heightens their radiance, in Vera Röhm’s work wood, the traditional material for sculpture, and modern acrylic glass enter a fascinating aesthetic relationship. Doppelergänzung brings a host of contrary pairs of concepts to mind: sober geometry meets up with individually grown form, transparency with mass, the aerial with stable anchoring, anorganic with organic, solid with porous. The markedly constructive amalgam of stele and plinth vies moreover with the open and unstructured appearance of the fibrous ends of the wooden section; small trapped bubbles and splinters of wood can be seen there in the region of the fracture, recalling mysterious inclusions in amber. Despite the great differences in their materiality, wood and Perspex flow seamlessly into one another. The result is a symbiotic relationship in which the one cannot exist without the other, so that the two merge to form a poetic, sensuous whole. In this sculpture Vera Röhm has arrived at a very personal synthesis of nature and art. (Cornelia Buder)

Vera Röhm

1943 born in Landsberg am Lech
Lives and works in Darmstadt and Paris