Artworks from Katrin Jähne

Form finding via human behaviour & physical presence

The artist Katrin Jähne was born in Dresden and grew up in her beloved home town. In 1980 she learned the profession of retoucher at the Saxon Porcelain Manufactory in Dresden. It became clear early on that this alone was not enough for her: she was looking for more and, with the help of self-employment, fulfilled her dream of creative form design. An unbridled desire for sculptural design led her to study sculpture at the HfBK Dresden.

In 1996 she moved into the newly opened artists' house in Görlitz, where she experienced two years of exciting, highly creative artistic work and encounters with other artists from a wide range of disciplines. She spent a total of 18 years in Lower Silesian Upper Lusatia, where she drew on new artistic ideas and created artistic sculptures and sculptures (mainly from clay and papier-mâché). Later, the artist was drawn back to her hometown, and since November 2014 she has been living and working in a picturesque location on the outskirts of Dresden. Jähne still loves working with soft, malleable material and continued to expand her techniques. Volumes that curve, expand, fractures and wonderfully swaying lines increasingly inspire her. The aesthetics of surfaces, materials in interaction - in harmony or disharmony fascinate Jähne again and again and permeate her artistic work.

How it works

Jähne's work as a sculptor is predominantly sculptural. She loves to build up materials, to work out new spaces with volumes. She is inspired in particular by random forms in everyday life and nature. Real experienced forms are mixed methodically, Jähne reformulates what she has seen until they take on a new final form. The basis of her works is always the confrontation with the natural and real environment as well as the inner state of mind. Some of them live only from their form, others tell stories, ask questions and evoke sensitive emotions. The sculptor creates her sculptures mainly with the materials papier-mâché and terracotta.

For the artist, the medium of paper is a fascinating material that allows for both two- and three-dimensional creations. Paper enables a spatial illusion of heavy compactness, of cool and solid surfaces on two-dimensional space. Over a basic framework, Jähne first forms paper pulp in countless layers on top of each other. After the final drying process, the surface is sanded over and coloured.

Sometimes she is guided by a clear idea, to which the final form is ultimately subordinated. Even during the working process, inner images are constantly expanding. Jähne is primarily interested in the female body in her work. For her, content is mainly formulated through physicality. In doing so, the body frees itself from too much realism and attention to detail. Her moulded reductions often concern the head and limbs. The body, the torso, takes on the function of gesture, facial expression and transports significant emotions through the sensual expansion of its volumes. The artist is fascinated by the visual and tactile sensuality of the shaped surface of the paper, the illusion of heaviness and coldness that it radiates when so worked. Light, soft and warm, this sensuality reveals itself in the touch.

Her second love is clay, the malleable earth, whose sensuality becomes visible and perceptible both in the working process and in its earthen final state. This material also conceals the soft, yielding and brittle, fired final. She builds terracottas freely, in curved slabs or models them in clay in order to form small, limited serial variations by moulding them in plaster, the surfaces of which are designed differently, for example glazed, coloured or tinted.

Artistic career (excerpt)

2013 Scholarship residency at the Kunsthaus Schwabingen, Upper Palatinate
2015 Lecturer in adult further education, artistic work as sculptor
Important personal exhibitions (excerpt)

1995 Gallery NO, Baden-Baden
1998 "Katrin and Adrian Jähne", Annenkapelle Görlitz
1999 "Balance of daily things", Kunsthaus Siebenlehn (with Karin Heyne)
2001 "I Plastic You Graphic", Gallery Kunstlade, Zittau (with Frank Hüller)
2003 "Körperhaft", Annenkapelle Görlitz (with Berit Molau)
           "ZIW - Jenes Licht", Museum Dittelsdorf Gallery (with B. Böhme, G. Tiedeken)
2004 "Sculpture; terracotta and papier-mâché", Lower Orangery, Baroque Garden Großsedlitz
2007 "Trio Femme`nale", Annenkapelle, Görlitz (with Bettina Böhme, Angelika John)
2010 Kunstkontor, Seiffen (with Bettina Böhme)
2013 Gallery in the Ernst-Rietschel Birthplace Pulsnitz (with Isa Brützke and Heike Dittrich)
2014 "Kopfkanon" Königshain Castle with Karin Heyne
2015 "Contrasts", Gallery Kunstlade Zittau (with T. Krautschick)
2016 galerie drei, Dresden, "3 D", (with Kornelia Thümmel and Barbara Wiesner)
2019 "How I can tell", gallery of the Kreativen Werkstatt Dresden e.V.
Works in public ownership

- Clinics Pulsnitz/Ernst - Rietschel - Art Ring
- Cultural History Museum City of Görlitz
- Hospital Görlitz

Art prizes

1997 Winner of the "Art Prize of Upper Lusatia