Elia Häberli
Elia Häberli – glass objects
Glass is a natural product and a development of civilization.
It is the material that Elia Häberli has chosen for her artistic work.
It is the contrasting nature of this material that fascinates
Elia Häberli, combinations such as fragility and wounding force,
the flowing and the unchangeable, transparency and opaque.
This opposition can be felt in almost all of her objects.
Her works show two sides, two ways of looking at it.
For her that is life. A smooth and a rough side. Together they form
one unity. Sometimes the one or the other side predominates.
Such contrasts are spirit and body, feeling and intellect,
emotionality and rationality, light and darkness, joy and mourning,
death and birth, all of which are very close to each other.
The meeting point of these two worlds in her objects can
only be guessed, felt or understood.
Hardly any other artistic raw material shows the process
of its creation in the finished object with such immediacy.
Elia Häberli’s glass objects are cast. In the casting process
there is a wide range for the artist to express herself in images.
In her most recent works Elia Häberli sensitizes the observer
above all for the creative process and the material itself by
using moulds made of sand. After the form has solidified,
traces of the sand stick to the sides of the object.
Elia Häberli leaves the «sandy memories» on the surface of her
sculptures. In doing this she indirectly refers to quartz sand,
an essential invisible element of glass itself, and makes the
observer aware of the working process.
Working with glass is a process for Elia Häberli. She experiments,
takes risks in trying things out, loves the single specimen in its
uniqueness and distinctiveness. In her glass objects she does not
search illusions, but strong expression and an abstract imagery.
She wants the observer to understand her analysis of the material
and of its losses that life causes in body and soul.
«Glass lives. It is original, unpredictable, becomes liquid,
can be formed and sets limits. These limits also show me my
personal limits. An intense confrontation between my possibilities
and those of glass develops. The way I treat it – it treats me.»
originality, ist unpredictability and the variety of forms.
For Elia Häberli glass is not dead matter. It has characteristics
which bring her to the limits of her personal skills and knowledge
of the raw material. The artist is interested in making visible the
process, the struggle for form and flow of colour, the taming of
the material which nevertheless never loses its individuality.
Glass changes all the time; its state – liquid – becomes manifest
in areas of tension, in changes of surface and colour from shining
to dim or crystal clear to opaque states. Glass is never solid.
It surprises again and again, it changes the same way life changes.
While dealing and working with glass Elia Häberli has a good look
at life itself: the genesis of her sculptures is influenced by both
coincidence and foreseeing. Glass breaks and is torn when cooling
down; but even the solidified material lives on in its complexity
and the changeability of its light effects.
Elia Häberli’s glass objects fascinate in a mysterious way.
They convey tension and chaos, but also peace and balance.
They show aesthetic, softly formed sides as well as sharp edges
and impenetrable depths. They confuse you or touch you.
Both artist and observer have to accept them as they are.
A later change is hardly possible or – if endeavoured – only linked
with losses that leave traces and scars, similar to those.
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Elia Häberli • Unterortstrasse 5 c • 8804 Au Zh • 044 451 17 24 • 079 756 16 85 • info(at)eliahaeberli.ch