Too Much of Me, 2023

Acrystal, clay, metal, fiberglas and pigment
215 × 90 × 72 cm

This cast of a clay sculpture is covered with what seems to resemble burls that typically grow on the trunk of a tree. Encased within it is a face sculpted by Heike Kabisch that appears to be sleeping, as if her energy was being tapped like the sap of a tree. In the figure’s slumber, the profusions around her become a consumptive burial that lingers at the edge of decay.

“Kabisch labors on a grotesque bulge of clay during the spring of 2023. She unwraps the mass to present a face sleeping within a blanket of foliage, terrycloth, and tree bark. The sculpture, Too much of me (2023), is a burial suit of unfired clay that will leave only a shell in the following months. Its final state is not foreseeable, as loss and decay consume the artwork through its porose and unfinished design. Gathering inside its heavy clay body is a gift of loneliness and distance within claustrophobic proximity. ‘The works could die at any time and I liked them all the more for that. In life’s chronic impermanence, the fleeting feels like the only tangible thing.’ And so the sculpture crumbles slowly within the studio’s shelter, on the exhibition floor, for an ephemeral funeral.” — From ‘Exit Elsewhere: Beyond the Body, Beyond Place’ by Nina Hanz in The World Pulse Beats Beyond My Door