The artist placed a freshly rolled out clay slab on the rim of an aquarium. Through the capillary action of the water, the part in the aquarium is separated and sinks to the bottom. The part that remains outside the aquarium slides down the glass, dries, shrinks, and deforms.
From the Series Clay Studies:
In Clay Studies, Simone Kessler has concentrated entirely on the material clay, aiming to create something temporary, something that lives and continues to develop. The starting point for her series of works was her piece Boden, a 50-square-meter room with a smooth floor made of earth-moist clay. The artist had brought 3.5 tons of raw material by trailer from a Hessian clay pit to the exhibition space and spread it out on the floor in painstaking manual labor until a flat surface was created. In the exhibition, the clay surface could be viewed but not walked on. Kessler was primarily concerned with the spatial effect of the material and the confrontation with its transformation process. After the exhibition, she tore the work down: crushed to powder and mixed with water, the clay became a mass with homogeneous color and new suppleness again. It serves as a raw material for subsequent works. The objects created from the recycled clay are once again entirely dedicated to the material and its processes of change. The unpreservable state of the material is an important subject in the series Clay Studies.