Lysann Németh

Lysann Németh studied Fine Art at the Bauhaus University Weimar until 2008. After graduating, she moved to Chemnitz, where she has worked as a freelance artist ever since. She was a co-founder of the Institut für wahre Kunst and was involved in curating the Begehungen for three years until 2012 as well as co-running Galerie HINTEN until 2019.

In her work, she deals with things of a transient nature; utensils that have become useless. She examines unnoticed objects from different perspectives. For example, she reconstructed the breakage points of cracked nuts, created #monotypes of worn-out receipt copies and documented burnt matches in watercolour.

‘I liked the idea of depicting a fire-producing object like a match in watercolour. The meticulous colouring reminded me of the work of naturalists.’

Umbrellas are also a recurring focus of her work. She began with umbrella frames that she found on the street, worked on and took apart. ‘The broken, fragile umbrella frames resembled insect legs. By casting them in synthetic resin, I created objects that resemble amber finds.’

In 2019, her research led her to the Adorf umbrella factory, a part of the former state-owned umbrella factory in Karl-Marx-Stadt, which employed around 300 female workers during the GDR era. With the aim of making them visible, she started a blog to publish her findings, with audio recordings of the conversations.

‘I decided to make the women audible on various topics; to record their different voices, which changed with age, and to capture something of their temperament.’

In the studio, she devotes herself to drawing, among other things. She condenses and overlays the paper with pencil, line by line. The visible areas are sometimes modelled more, sometimes less. The drawings show sections of umbrellas that have been turned into tote bags, the pattern development of which she is currently researching.

You can find out more about Lysann’s work at http://lysann-nemeth.de/ and https://adorferfrauen.de/.