Ŝablono

In 2014, the Los Carpinteros artists collective created Helm/Helmet/Yelmo, a permanent space in Museum Folkwang for a special section of the collection. The latter consists of artisanal and sculptural objects of which many originated in non-European contexts. The collection was compiled from 1898 onwards by Folkwang founder Karl Ernst Osthaus and items for it continued to be collected in Essen through to the 1970s. In changing presentations, the Helmet highlights the sheer range of different objects housed in the Museum Folkwang storerooms. The current presentation arose in cooperation with Sammlung Olbricht. It focuses on vessels that have designs featuring patterns and regular structures. The creative spectrum extends from minimalist through to highly elaborate and skilful decors. Often, the properties of the materials in question are consciously used to achieve graphic effects. In particular, in the items from European art cabinets featured in Sammlung Olbricht, nature and art, (i.e., nature and humans) compete directly with each other. The objects in the Helmet are presented in vague chronological order. Where we do not know the time when they were made, we have taken the date when they were acquired as our reference point. Some 5,600 years separate the oldest and the most recent work in the space, and yet all the items share an underlying vocabulary of shapes used. At the invitation of Museum Folkwang, Bastian Muhr (born 1981) has analysed the latter and reduced it to four concentrated symbols. In his wall-mounted piece entitled ŝablono (Esperanto for 'pattern') they form a flowing graphic movement that engages with the other objects in the space.