Anna Bera (born 1985) is a sculptor and designer from Lechów in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains. She is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, a member of Nów. New Craft Poland, as well as a scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. She runs her own studio in Warsaw, where she creates predominantly large-format sculptures and utilitarian objects made of wood. In her work, Bera focuses on the sensory perception of the materiality of the world. She searches for a particular way in which objects exist in relation to space and people, and often creates objects that are heavy and bulky or rich in detail and texture, thus almost provoking physical contact. The object’s function is sometimes merely an excuse for making it; the form disrupts the function and turns it into a means of artistic expression, just like shape or colour. Bera’s works have been exhibited in Poland, Europe, USA, and South-east Asia, including at the Design Museum Brussels, Austrian Cultural Forum in New York, the Lapidarium of the National Museum in Prague, the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft in Ditchling, the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design in Tallinn, as well as at numerous festivals and fairs, including Milan Design Week, Wanted Design Manhattan, Collect Art Fair in London, and Stockholm Furniture and Light Fair.
There’s a moment when something that hasn’t previously existed as a possibility comes about magically, as it were, because it happens unexpectedly and immediately, incontrovertibly, you might say. The appearance of that something isn’t the result of deliberations, of observation and ascertainment, but belongs under the category of yes-no. Existence-non-existence. And, as with something which was not, but is, what’s astonishing in the end is the obviousness of that something’s existence. Because that something comes about without my participation. This isn’t creating, but more a matter of watching as it emerges or rather as it simply is, because it doesn’t appear, it doesn’t emerge in time, there’s just nothing and then... something. Although, perhaps, even if there isn’t nothing, because there’s no impression of an empty space, the consciousness of the possibility of that something doesn’t exist.
Obscenely obvious things interest me.
I would like everything to be directly in view. For a composition to be obvious, for things to be at the central point, perhaps raised somehow, even elevated, uplifted, like standing on a peak.
One thing. Irrevocable. A step taken, uncompromising, a one-off. Without reasoning. Without explanations. Only things which have no need of explanations and descriptions. No hidden intentions whatsoever. The pleasure of leaving everything else. The entire surfeit.
I think about something potent, explicit, so much so that it is obscene, like it really is. You can touch it. It is heavy and if it were to fall on me, it would crush me to pulp. I wanted it to be like death; for instance, a stone is like death.
When you have exhausted all possibilities of placing things on the margin, then you should start placing in the middle.