Elam artist an international rock star in the world of art

By MALCOLM BURGESS

You could call Karin Sander the Porsche of conceptual artists - smooth, silent, powerful and able to execute hairpin turns. Her works are simple in design yet driven by "bleeding edge" technology. Why let off-the-shelf electronics get in the way of a good idea?

Despite her formidable reputation, Sander's daily life seems far removed from the kind depicted in the recent spate of artist biopics to reach our screens. The temporary home of Elam's latest artist-in-residence is set amid a jumble of clanging construction chaos - shades of Sander's own home, Berlin, during its mad dash towards modernisation. Artworks litter the building's lift, hallways, and rooftop like cobwebs; the lift buttons don't correspond to the desired floors.

But somehow the comfy yet humble flat perched atop the Elam art studios in central Auckland manages a plush, urbane stillness. This could be because of the carpet, but it's more likely that some hidden machine is cancelling out the din, given the artist's modus operandi; a complex, concealed mechanical feat, resulting in a simple yet disquieting effect.

Unlike Frida Kahlo, Sander is neither confrontational nor does she have "artist" written all over her. And instead of Jackson Pollock's hard liquor, she offers green tea. From first impressions she might as well be an architect, or a doctor.

But contrary to appearances, the 40-something German artist is every bit the "major" art world figure - the real deal. The fact that she's exhibiting in San Francisco alongside Gerhard Richter, Marcel Duchamp and Jasper Johns gives some idea of where she features in the hierarchy of art. She has also had solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and she is the professor of sculpture at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weisensee.

So why Auckland? "I like to work abroad," she says. "I travel a lot, and like to think over works I have done from a distance."

Such shifts in perspective are Sander's major calling card. Her most renowned works involve precision 3D miniaturisation and groundbreaking mathematics - very different, precise ways of looking at things. Indeed, last year she proposed a work that would redevelop parts of the Porsche plant in Stuttgart, Germany, reversing out the traffic symbols and subtly altering their frequency to help both pedestrians and traffic. "Subtly nuanced alterations," she calls this approach to art practice.

Elam first invited her to take up its residency in 2000, when she exhibited some of her work at Artspace on K'Rd. Although commitments prevented this happening, she is now here until the end of April.

An art nomad, Sander is constantly travelling - for solo and group shows and for residencies such as this one - so much so that she considers herself more a traveller by profession than anything else. And her journey to conceptual art is as singular as the path that ultimately brought her to New Zealand. She never intended to be an artist - medicine seemed more appealing, as did travelling. After leaving school in Germany, she began an apprenticeship as an art restorer, which wasn't to her taste.

Later, after art school in Stuttgart, where she studied painting and sculpture, Sander describes a formative moment that moved her in the direction of conceptual and installation art.

"I'm holding my paintbrush in my hand, the most amazing, thickest paintbrush I've ever held, with long, black bristles, and I begin to paint on the table with this new brush, but without using any paint. And this process of painting something on the table that nobody can see, that leaves no trace, produced the best picture I'd ever painted up until then."

Had she chosen medicine as a career, her artistic vision might have combined with a penchant for technological innovation in the vein of Gunther Hagens, the artist whose plastination techniques have found application in the scientific world, and whose public autopsy attracted the wrath of British legislators. But Sander can't be tied to a particular medium. She is as likely to remove as to create; one of her recent works involving polishing down the surface of a gallery wall until it reflected.

During her time in Auckland, Sander has arranged one show at the George Fraser gallery, in which she helped students with works that would last no more than 24 hours. Another is planned for this month, involving an exchange of works by both her New Zealand and German students.

She may even send them further, if the idea sticks. Meanwhile, an exhibition of her own work opens at the Jensen Gallery in Newton on April 29.

Proof of her huge appeal can be found in the tiniest of details. Her recent gallery talk was so packed, audience members had to be turned away - rather more rock'n'roll than art history. "She's big league," says one student in awe.

Turning Picasso's statement "I don't search, I find" on its head, Sander offers an assessment of her own artistic method: "I don't invent, I find."

Nevertheless, her most famous works rely on technology never before attempted to produce astoundingly simple effects. Her trademark miniaturised figures were the end result of the innovative advancement of existing 3D scanning and printing technology. And her Center of Gravity of the City of Madiünster (1997) used a now patented method to calculate the modern-day centre of a city. This attracted its share of controversy, too. In divining the city's new hub - its centre of gravity - as if it were a sculpture, she upset the Catholic church, a major force in German life.

Her website, www.karinsander.de, challenges "art mediators" to build bridges between contemporary and past art. And so, to join the dots, we might look at Sander's oeuvre and detect such influences as the Bauhaus with its notion that all artists are architects of one kind or another. And there's an element of craftsmanship in her ability to co-ordinate ideas, however fleeting. The only thing certain is that her biopic would have to be filmed Dogme 95-style - to fit with her preference for using "only what exists".