Interview with Hans Hemmert by Sara Arvidsson

When and why did you decide to become an artist?

I decided to become an artist right after the school when I was nineteen. I wanted to say something, which I could not say in words. I realized that words are not my medium to communicate things that really occupy my brain. I was also a real hobby-philosopher at that time, and philosophy also deals with things that are not clearly provable etc.

Your first sculpting material was steel, but you soon selected a less conventional material: air. What caused this decision and what impact did it have on your art?

I changed from steel to air at the moment my back started to hurt, due to the heavy weights I had to carry in my studio. I made drawings for one year. Then I started using banal inflatable objects like swimming pool items and children toys. After a while I started to build these objects myself. I used PVC at first, latex came later and this material has stayed with me for years and years. To work with air is so beautiful, because you can create big works, without storage problems. No transport or handling disasters either. I also like the idea of temporary things: air is okay for one exhibition and it can be removed easily, there is no trash left. The work becomes so light, ephemeral and philosophical in a way. Art with air resemble the medium of drawing – simple, direct, very near to the original idea of the work itself.

In a YouTube-video you’re talking about the performances behind the balloon photos. You’re entering balloons and climbing ladders, carrying beer etc. You can stay inside a balloon for 15 minutes. If you stay there any longer, you would suffocate. I interpret this as being more than just the apparent implication, that it’s also a symbolic question about how long anyone can stay isolated without dying. Was this also a thought of yours?

I can stay in a small balloon for 15 min and in a big balloon for a whole day; the later is like a studio. Concerning your final question – yes, I was also aware about this implication. The work and the action/performance I did, pictures also the social isolation humans can be confronted with. When I was “working” inside these balloons I felt this isolation, this cold scary and lonesome feeling. It would be a horror-vision to be trapped inside such a balloon for a longer period. It is not just that you feel kind of “blind” but also that you’re suffocating in a certain time.

You’re re-creating cathedrals and war tanks, but you’re making them of balloons. This gives them a soft, childish and transient look and meaning, which distinguishes them from their original counterparts. Why have you chosen to transform these power-related tools and buildings into balloon sculptures?

I like the visual contrast of these images. War tanks, cathedrals and canons are symbols of power and oppression. When these visual shapes are made of colorful balloons, you start to smile and laugh at it. It is difficult and exhausting to find words and arguments against a war tank, but it’s freeing to find images against it.

What will we experience and see in your exhibition at Nextart?

You will see some photographs of balloon-works and 10-minute long performances I did in my studio. There will also be works where I have transformed virtual objects on the computer – a “3d world”- into pencil-drawings. The main installation consists of a big, giant air-balloon that fills up a whole living room. From the door or the window you’ll see furniture inside, but nobody can enter the room. The space is taken up by something else, by an idea, by an embryonic stem cell that can be destroyed any moment. The balloon is there but it could vanish within a second, when someone is not aware that his or hers glowing cigarette is hurting the thin, tensioned skin.