VERA RÖHM
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Biography |
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| Born in Landsberg/Lech in 1943, Vera Röhm grew up in Geneva and Darmstadt. After studying at Académie Charpentier in Paris for a year, she completed an internship as a stage designer at the Grand-Théatre in Geneva in 1962-63 before concluding her studies at ECAL in Lausanne. In 1967 she visited New York, New Mexico and California for work residencies. In 1968 Vera Röhm began making her first sculptures in Paris. In 1972 she created her Binome sculptures using metal and stone in conjunction with Plexiglas. During this time she also constructed her first Tetraeder mit Einschnitten calculated according to halving the angles or the length of the sides in the area of a triangle. In 1975 she started working on the series Ergänzungen, which combines the materials wood and Plexiglas. She also made the piece Der Baum, photographed at Messel Pit. After exploring the Marais quarter in Paris with her camera, she began to create the reworked photography cycles Stützwerke in 1977. These were followed, in 1981, by the photographic series Windbruch im Wald, as well as by her piece Skogsordbok in the same year. In 1983 Vera Röhm designed the stage set for La nuit juste avant les forêts by Bernard-Marie Koltès under the direction of Sigrid Herzog for the Munich Theatre Festival. She based her long-term work cycle Topographie der Zeit, begun in 1983, on a visual representation of time, space and movement. By tracing the movement of the shadow of a geometrical body throughout a day she created drawings, reliefs, sculptures and installations. She executed her polyglot work group Die Nacht ist der Schatten der Erde in a variety of media from 1985 onwards. In 1989 she collaborated with Gerhard Bohner in creating an installation with nine Ergänzungen for his choreography Im (goldenen) Schnitt I, (Durch den Raum, durch den Körper), which premiered at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. The choreographer Cesc Gelabert adopted the solo performance and it was staged in Europe, Japan, Australia and China. Among others, this included performances within the context of the Festival d’Automne held at the Centre Pompidou in 2002 and at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2013. Works created in the context of public art competitions: Having won the respective competitions, Vera Röhm realized the percent-for-art commission Progression for Landeszentralbank Iserlohn in 1986, the glass labyrinth Du sollst – Du sollst nicht in the courtyard of Göttingen district court in 1994, the Schattenrelief 0-360° for Fraunhofer Institute in Darmstadt in 1998, as well as in 2003 the work Topographie der Zeit – Schattenwanderungen for the courtyard of an elementary school in Darmstadt. In 1995 Vera Röhm traveled to New Delhi, Jaipur and Ujjain in order to document historical Indian observatories. The photographs she took there, of which large format prints were made, were first shown in 1998/1999 in the Mathildenhöhe exhibition halls in Darmstadt in the context of her solo exhibition Schattenwanderungen. She created her first floating verses, after Paul Éluard, in 2002 for the ARTCANAL as part of the EXPO in Bienne/Neuchâtel and the verses Echo und Narcissus from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” for the Blickachsen 7 festival held in Bad Homburg’s palace and spa gardens in 2009. In 1997 Vera Röhm was awarded the Wilhelm-Loth-Prize of the City of Darmstadt, followed in 2003 by the Johann-Heinrich-Merck-Honor of the City of Darmstadt. In 2004, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt acquired the Simon Spierer collection Ein Wald der Skulpturen, which features Vera Röhm with an Ergänzung piece. In 2009-2012 she created the monumental sculpture Licht-Strahl-Eiche. In 2010 she produced Spiegelbaum for the Internationaler Waldkunstpfad permanent woodland exhibition in Darmstadt. In 2011 her drawing Winkel-Ergänzung Beta 75° was acquired for the print collection of Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. In 2015 her Licht-Strahl-Eiche was unveiled, which is now also in the possession of Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. 2018 Erection of the monumental sculpture Rhythmus 800 at the Vasarely Foundation, Aix en Provence, as part of the Cultural Year MP2018 (Marseille-Provence 2018). Vera Röhm is a member of the Darmstadt Secession. Her works are part of numerous international and museum collections. She regularly exhibits in Germany, France and abroad, and lives in Darmstadt and Paris. |
© Copyright Vera Röhm
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