The “Terranian Platform“ is part of a world-embracing artistic concept which Thomas Stimm began to develop together with Uta Weber in 1995 under the label “soylent green“. “Terra” stands for a universal concept of home that is valid for all creatures on our planet and that is expressed through decorative multi-coloured designs.
This sculptural platform with the inscription “TERRA MY TERRA/ PLANET SO SWEET/ I CAN FEEL YOU/ UNDER MY FEET“ is thus a sensual metaphor for the globe as the basis for and integral part of all existence. This is a planetary socle sculpture, condensed into an art form, which represents and interprets the world as the basis of life and as its necessary focal point.
Stimm uses art both as a means of heightening sensual awareness and formulating programmatic concerns, reflecting and visualising one in the other. He thus contradicts all those who consider the gap between emotionality and intellectuality unbridgeable, exposing this view of things as unrealistic and simple-minded.
The emphasis on earthy, terrestrial references in the multi-coloured geometric language and socle object of the “Terranian Platform” does not constitute a break with Stimm’s earlier painted clay sculptures that, similar to comics, reflect the world on a small, intimate level. He rather develops their theme through references that now also take up objects and signs.
With clay as a genuine earthy material, the artist has created metaphoric platforms of life, colourist microcosms of existence, where poetic subtleness is connected with the purity of life. Via the platform of the sculpture, viewers now have the possibility of exploring their own existence and its position in the world. The platform thus becomes a basis for action, both in a literal and a non-literal sense.
