KATHARINA JAEGER – Carapace – 18 Feb-14 March, 2025

Gestaltwandler, 2025, tent fragments, sleeping bags, curtains, blankets, clothing, duvet cover, webbing, cord, thread

Carapace is a body of work I started developing during the pandemic. At the time I was questioning how I could sustain a sculpture practice without a specific destination for my work. This led me to making portable and tactile sculpture that had the capacity to be unfolded into large assemblages and thought of as protective layers. I sew together and overlay textiles from tents, sleeping bags, clothing, blankets, duvets and curtains. Collecting my raw materials is an ongoing and confronting process. It is where I begin. Objects and materials with a close relationship to the body continue to find their way into my practice.

Carapace follows on from Scaffold, an installation Katharina Jaeger presented in a former warehouse in Ōhinehau Lyttelton late in 2024. In this new installation she adapts her flexible sculptural work to a more intimate space. For Jaeger, the fabrication of her pieces is only a starting point. The work needs the structure of an existing space to facilitate transformation and come alive. The main piece in Carapace is Gestaltwandler (shape shifter), an expansive construction of multi-coloured  fabric which Katharina has stitched together to make a single large work. It is stretched with orange cord to connect the four walls of the main gallery space. This work is activated by the wanderings of the viewer who experience it in a spatial as well as a visual sense. Accompanying Gestaltwandler are four drawings entitled Fragment that collage cut fabric onto paper in freely composed abstractions.

      

Born in Zurich 1964, Katharina Jaeger studied art at Kunstgewerbeschule Zurich before she immigrated to New Zealand in 1986. She gained a Bachelor of Design at Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. Katharina has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and has recently been included as a finalist in the Parkin Drawing Prize 2017. Her practice consists mainly of drawing and sculpture. Drawing is central and ranges from small-scaled to large-scaled works on paper and textile. The use of found objects has been part of her practice over the past 15 years. Items such as clothing, domestic furniture, household and recreational items combined with other elements and being resurrected anew. Jaeger is interested in transformation and twining together themes of the established and misplaced, the anonymous and the personal.
Jaeger’s work is represented in the collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu.

ARTIST FLOORTALK: Sat 8 March, 11am