Ina Weber

Ina Weber (born 1964) uses the assorted, and extremely varied, wares of DIY stores as material for her carefully constructed or cast concrete sculptures. High-rise buildings, supermarkets, swimming pools and petrol stations, as well as furniture from pedestrian zones and student halls of residence constitute the prototypes of a functional mundane culture whose design always has something to say about the condition of society. Weber’s sculptures are not authentic models of real buildings, however. She adroitly appropriates existing structures, combining and reproducing them to a different scale. This is linked to a serene re-evaluation of basic designs and her references to the aesthetics of building from the modernist to the contemporary. Her view of the world is both restrained and amused, and this is particularly evident in her large-format watercolours, where she captures the stylistic iconoclasm and architectonic misunderstandings that occur when functionality is combined with absurd decoration.