Sonja Alhäuser (born 1969) is a German
artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...
.
Biography
Sonja Alhäuser was born in
Kirchen
Kirchen (Sieg) is a town and Luftkurort (climatic spa) in the district of Altenkirchen (district), Altenkirchen in the north of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated on the river Sieg (river), Sieg, approx. 12 km southwest of Siegen. A ...
(
Westerwald
The Westerwald (; literally 'Western forest') is a low mountain range on the right bank of the river Rhine in the States of Germany, German federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. It is a part of the Rhenish Ma ...
), Germany in 1969 and studied at the
Staatliche Kunstakademie (State Art Academy) in
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...
, becoming "Meisterschülerin" (Master Disciple) of
Fritz Schwegler
Fritz Schwegler (7 May 1935 – 3 June 2014) was a German painter, graphic artist, sculptor and musician.
Life and work
Born in the Swabian town of Börtlingen, Breech near Göppingen, Schwegler was first apprenticed as a joiner to his father. H ...
in 1995.
From 2002 to 2005, Alhäuser taught drawing at the
University of Duisburg-Essen
The University of Duisburg-Essen () is a public research university in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. In the 2019 ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', the university was awarded 194th place in the world. It was originally ...
, and from 2007 to 2009 painting at the Braunschweig Academy.
She has received a large number of awards, including the “Peter-Mertes-Scholarship” of the “Bonn Kunstverein” in 1997, the “Förderpreis der Stadt Düsseldorf” in 2000 and the “
Dorothea Erxleben-Scholarship” of the
Federal State of Lower Saxony, 2007–2009.
She now lives and works in Berlin and is represented by
Michael Schultz Gallery.
Works
Alhäuser's work in
different media is, for a large part, characterized by the fascination of the transitory, both in materials used and in the nature of her performances and
installations. She has made banquet installations of edible materials and also shaped sculptures out of butter, chocolate and other foods.
The ephemeral character of the installations does not only point at the transitoriness of life but also sets her work in the context of venerable traditions: for instance
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( ; ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and Aesthetics, art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism and sociology. With Heinrich Böll, , Caroline Tisdall, Rober ...
who likewise employed transitory materials (like fat and honey) whilst the banquet as an artistic subject reaches from
Petronius Arbiter's ''
Cena Trimalchionis
The ''Satyricon'', ''Satyricon'' ''liber'' (''The Book of Satyrlike Adventures''), or ''Satyrica'', is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius in the late 1st century AD, though the manuscript tradition identifi ...
'' to paintings of kings' banquets (where one felt honoured to be invited to watch the nobility feasting) and finally the
Last Supper
Image:The Last Supper - Leonardo Da Vinci - High Resolution 32x16.jpg, 400px, alt=''The Last Supper'' by Leonardo da Vinci - Clickable Image, ''The Last Supper (Leonardo), The Last Supper'' (1495-1498). Mural, tempera on gesso, pitch and mastic ...
.
She also casts sculptures in
German Silver
Nickel silver, maillechort, German silver, argentan, new silver, nickel brass, albata, or alpacca is a cupronickel (copper with nickel) alloy with the addition of zinc. The usual formulation is 60% copper, 20% nickel and 20% zinc. Nickel silver ...
and makes large wall drawings. Furthermore, she works in traditional media like watercolours,
acrylic and crayon by means of which she is creating distributive, all-over-like compositions of animals, fruits, vegetables, clothing, body parts, and mythological figures. Thus her oeuvre is considered a contribution to the discourse on
environmental ethics
In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resourc ...
.
In Sonja Alhäuser's work "Emsrausch," a sensory-rich scene is created, blending edible elements with artistic media such as butter sculptures and miniature watercolor paintin
along with the incorporation of surveillance cameras for observation. This installation not only showcases the perishable nature of food but also explores the fleeting beauty of art, merging themes of consumption, observation, and fleeting moments. Vividly demonstrating the spirit of the "culinary art" movement, it combines cooking with visual art in a thought-provoking installation, highlighting the relationship between culinary materials and artistic expressi
Publications
* Sonja Alhäuser, ''Kunst in Schokolade'', Gesellschaft für moderne Kunst am
Museum Ludwig
Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lic ...
,
Imhoff-Stollwerck-Museum (edd.), Cologne 2005
* Sonja Alhäuser, ''Immerzu'', Cologne 2007
* Sonja Alhäuser, ''Hartgesotten'', Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst / Kunstverein Ulm 2010
* Sonja Alhäuser, ''fundamentales Vielleicht'', Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin 2010
* Sonja Alhäuser, ''Maximelange'', Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin 2013
[Cfr]
Sonja Alhäuser
in worldcat.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alhauser, Sonja
1969 births
Living people
20th-century German women sculptors
21st-century German women sculptors
German contemporary artists
German performance artists
German installation artists
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni
People from Kirchen
German women performance artists
Academic staff of the University of Duisburg-Essen