Ellen Urselmann (1978, Baarlo) wants to show that life is not just running into a successful future, but that human being is also moulded by history. With her objects Ellen creates a reflection on the past and the spectator is possibly triggered to think and feel about its own history. To accomplish this effect, Ellen needs to incorporate random elements in her glass sculptures. Her objects are called ‘Objects trouves’, like a photograph, a pearl necklace or old glasses which are referring directly to the past. All these concrete references, like she says, are never personally. This deliberately colourlessness should make it possible for the spectator to fill his own personal thoughts. Ellen’s work is modest and well-considerated and in this way Ellen Urselmann avoids the fish trap of romantic nostalgia; ‘the easy looking back’. She defines the indefinable, Whether it is a thought or a feeling, there is only a short moment it can be captured before it loses its palpability.
The fragility of the present, the tension between future and past.
Between someday receiving and never again having. She captures thoughts at the very moment they gravitate towards intangibility.
Standing still at the summit of suspense, both feet firmly on the ground Ellen Urselmann poses the question: how have we gotten there, and how to continue……