Anyone who has ever converted an old house, i.e. adapted it to their own ideas and needs, knows how many obstacles lurk on this path. The existing situation sets the framework, a lot is non-negotiable, but some things are feasible. A symbiosis of historic charm and modern accents can only succeed if you demonstrate a wealth of ideas and a great deal of skill. The Museum of the City of Grafing is now presenting a true master of this subject: Robert M. Weber. The universalist has specialized in sacred art and has redesigned countless churches throughout Germany. A task that requires not only creativity but also a sure instinct, after all, these are not just any buildings, but sanctuaries with a tradition that goes back centuries. Church, monument protection – one cannot imagine the year-long struggle for solutions.
For this premiere, the artist looked back on more than 30 years of independent work
An angel – à la Robert Weber.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
Weber conceived and built a room within a room for this chapel.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
After Günther Ettenhuber and Fritz Brosig, Weber is only the third living artist from Grafing whom museum director Bernhard Schäfer has selected for a solo show. An honor, of course – which, however, also met with a certain skepticism from the sculptor: “He was afraid of being put in the showcase,” says Schäfer and laughs. “I’m still pretty much alive,” adds Weber, born in 1958 and still an active artist. Nevertheless, he obviously enjoyed looking back on more than 30 years of independent work, sifting through the warehouse and archive and experiencing one or the other surprise in the process. “You open a box and what comes out? A long-forgotten work.”
Robert M. Weber was born in Munich in 1958, where he attended technical college for design. He then trained as a journeyman with the carpenters Georg Braun and Ernst Bauer in Grafing before studying sculpture with Hans Ladner at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Weber has been a freelance artist since 1988. Initially he lived and worked in Schloss Hirschbichl near Emmering, in 1995 he moved to Grafing, where he initially set up his studio on Grandauerstraße before moving to the commercial complex on Griesstraße in 2005.
There, in an industrial monument, Weber has enough space to create his sometimes huge works and to store all his material, his designs, models and works. And the special thing about the current show at the Stadtmuseum is that it also integrates the studio. So there are two exhibitions in two places, which together offer a cross-section of Weber’s diverse work – which is not only a premiere for the public, but also for the artist himself. “It was really exciting to design all of this,” and he learned a lot from Schäfer about museum presentations. The title of the double show is “Pictures, Spaces, Objects” and it provides a good insight into the rich oeuvre of the weaver, which can be summed up with the words “sacred design – creative development”.
Weber has brought places of worship from the past four centuries into the present
This is what a sanctuary in Berlin looked like before Weber redesigned it…
(Photo: Organizer)
… and this is the result.
(Photo: Organizer)
In the museum, mainly documentation of sacred designs can be seen on the basis of drawings, models and photos. Weber has brought places of worship from the past four centuries into the present, but also created completely new church interiors. His works range from sacred implements (Vasa Sacra such as crosses, candlesticks, host bowls or chalices) to liturgical furnishings (such as altars, ambos or pews) to art in buildings such as windows or wall designs. Weber created meter-high works, built rooms within rooms and even designed organs. Only about 16 percent of his commissions over the past 30 years could have found their way into the museum, he explains. “And making a choice was damn hard.”
Weber always builds his models out of wood, and his designs have won numerous competitions. With the originals, he uses the entire range of textures: in addition to wood, metal, stone, glass, concrete, aluminum and more are used here. Some of the documentation in the museum gives a vivid impression of Weber’s intensive creative processes by comparing the “before” and “after”. And by showing the battles of material that it sometimes takes before a church nave shines in new splendor. Three tons of steel and six tons of concrete, for example, gobbled up a relief that, despite its size, now quite casually fills a sanctuary. It is important to Weber that many of his works could only have been created in collaboration with outstanding artists and craftsmen, they are honored on a long table with “references”.
Weber receives a particularly large number of inquiries because of his modern Stations of the Cross, drawn and etched in hand-blown glass.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
Weber likes to work with encaustic, i.e. wax, to abstract religious motifs, for example.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
Weber also designed meter-high walls – here a model – to give sacred rooms a contemporary look.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
In his announcement, Schäfer writes: The exhibition shows “how Robert M. Weber repeatedly succeeds in solving the task of post-conciliar design with a contemporary design language in dialogue with the existing building”. It is always reduction, color and light, clear lines of sight and abstract designs that make his work so convincing. That may be too modern for some traditionalists, but Weber himself by no means sees himself as a provocateur. Courageously, yes, and also playfully, he always approaches his sacred commissions, but the goal is always a harmonious design, a reconciliation of old and new.
There are paintings to see and various objects, carved, scratched, printed and modeled
Robert M. Weber is not only at home in the wide field of applied arts, but also finds the time and leisure to give visible expression to his free ideas and inspirations. This is revealed by selected works that the Grafinger is now showing in his studio parallel to the show in the museum. Here, too, the diversity of the universalist immediately catches the eye. There are paintings to see and various objects, carved, scratched, printed and modeled. And here too, as with the sacred, it is about people and space, about internalization.
The Grafinger also likes to play with light and color in his personal work.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
Weber’s works don’t jump at the viewer, they rather want to be discovered, want to create closeness. The motifs are often recurring: you see all sorts of abstract heads or narrow boats in various designs. But a lot is also completely non-representational, leaving a lot of room for interpretation. At first glance, the design often appears rough, many surfaces are rough, imperfect, even deliberately slashed, because Weber is concerned with scars, with the “notches of life”, and by no means with perfection. Nevertheless, there is great poetry in this spiritual search for the inner being, the soul of every being.
Simple and yet big: Weber’s wooden boats.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
Robert Weber’s sacred commissioned works and his free art not only complement each other, but are closely related. They are two worlds, but the two sides of only one person.
Robert M. Weber “Pictures, Spaces, Objects”, exhibition in the Grafing City Museum and in the Weber studio, opening on Saturday, May 14, at 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. Opening times: in the museum on Sundays 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and Thursdays 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. (until September 11); in the studio on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. (until May 29).