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BFA Metal Art

Théotime Ritzenthaler

 Orthopaedics

 

These works are juxtaposing precisely machined and polished steel with hot forged steel bones, covered in a clay slurry poured over the warm metal to give them their color. Orthopaedics are manifesting a dialog around the themes of injury and medicine using craft as a communication tool between Mind and Body.  

A personal dialog in which I explored my own relationship to these notions, but also a dialog with an external audience raising universal interrogations like the dogma of medicine or the body as a commodity. 

Using my craft to explore these issues filters the themes through my hands, like the image of the medical entity is filtered through my mind. 

In this way, craft allows for a healthy Mind-Body interaction, acting as an external bridge between the two entities. 

This circular interaction of layers of filtering, from idea, through the mind, then through the hands and back to reality offers me a possibility to face the distortion existing in my Mind and creates a situation of introspection and re-evaluation leading to a new understanding of the subject matter. 

My life is moving, 

I work with my body, 

When I don’t work, I move, I hike and I run. 

When I got injured I felt like my life was over. 

What if I can never do any of that again ? 

What am I going to do then? 

I realized the preciousness of my body. 

My mind is not the supreme ruler of my actions anymore. 

 

This injury wasn’t time limited, 

it wasn’t painful nor urgent 

Was handing my body over to Medicine necessary? 

Is cutting into my body necessary? 

Can I try to wait it out? 

 

Maybe it’s not that bad. 

Maybe it will get better. 

 

Admitting means releasing medicine on myself. 

It means bargaining with a monster. 

Who knows what it will cost ? 

 

Maybe after all the monster has powers. 

Maybe it can save me and transcend me. 

Maybe I can live forever. 

 

 

@theotime_ritzenthaler 

www.theotime.eu 

theotime.ritzenthaler@gmail.com