The Architecture of Form and Muscle: Inside the Berlin Studio of Sculptor Veronika Janovec

BERLIN — "Is the equation between destruction and growth also a formula for art?"

This inquiry, posed by American postmodern novelist Kathy Acker in her seminal 1993 meditation Against Ordinary Language: The Language of the Body, serves as an intellectual cornerstone for understanding the work of Slovak-born, Berlin-based sculptor Veronika Janovec. Acker’s words—written originally to dissect how weightlifting exposes the limitations of language in capturing embodied experience—seem to hover continuously in the air of Janovec’s Kreuzberg apartment.

Part private residence and part evolving testing ground, Janovec’s living space blurs the boundary between domesticity and exhibition. With its sparse color palette and gallery-like atmosphere, it treats art and daily life not as discrete categories, but as a single, continuous continuum.

Main Facts: The Materiality of the Body and Space

Veronika Janovec occupies a unique space in contemporary European sculpture. Trained as an architect at London’s prestigious Architectural Association, she treats physical corporeality as foundational to her artistic output. "My brain is in my hands and in my body," she says, flashing a characteristic smile.

Working primarily with clay, Janovec translates the strict discipline of her weightlifting routines into sculptural mastery. Through precise repetition, she uses the medium to investigate metaphysical preoccupations: time, nature, and an unyielding inquiry into the nature of beauty. Her primordial, arresting forms—which have attracted a rapidly growing following across the European art market—thrive on tension. They balance precariously between the fragile and the steadfast, expansion and decay, the remembered and the imagined.

Her growing footprint in the contemporary art world is supported by gallery representation through MAJ VAN DER LINDEN in Berlin and Sgr A in Cologne, cementing her status as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary ceramic sculpture.

Chronology: From London Blueprints to Mexican Ateliers and Berlin Kilns

Janovec’s artistic trajectory is defined by a cross-disciplinary journey across continents and architectural philosophies.

The Architectural Genesis

Her obsession with the spatial dialectic of objects began during her studies at the Architectural Association (AA) in London, an experience she describes as a pivotal turning point. Initially, her earliest sculptural experiments took the form of conventional architectural models. However, an elective studio course shifted her focus permanently: her very first ceramic pieces emerged from dipping fennel leaves into successive layers of ceramic slip.

The Detour of Destiny

Upon relocating to Berlin with the intention of pursuing further studies at the Universität der Künste, a missed application deadline initially felt like a setback. Instead, Janovec recalls, it forced her to pivot: "Because then I had to come up with a plan."

South American Influences

That plan pulled her toward South and Central America, entranced by the monumental sweep of Brazilian modernist architecture. A subsequent stint in Mexico City proved transformative. Working alongside the interdisciplinary design practice Tezontle Studio—founded by Lucas Cantú and Carlos H. Matos—Janovec observed firsthand how founders integrated sculpture directly into architectural practice.

Immersed in Tezontle’s atelier in Mexico City’s historic center—surrounded by native plants, specialized texts, and architectural models—she recognized a unified philosophy of living and making. "For them, sculpture was the translation of beauty," she recalls. "I recognized in it a way of living."

The Berlin Practice

Returning to Berlin, Janovec spent her first two years in the studio engaged in unbridled experimentation. Relying on an iterative method borrowed directly from architectural design—where floor plans are endlessly redrawn and tested—she eventually anchored her practice in clay and glaze. Today, her works emerge from her Lichtenberg studio kiln before making the journey west to her apartment for spatial evaluation.

Supporting Data and Creative Methodology

Janovec’s studio practice is anchored in technical rigor, historical reference, and physical endurance.

The Prodigious Nature of Clay

"Clay is a prodigious material," Janovec reflects from her dining table, surrounded by stacks of reference books documenting everything from Lebanese sculptor Saloua Raouda Choucair’s work to pre-Hispanic artifacts and adobe architecture. "It’s so clever. I don’t know of another material that is malleable and then starts hardening, but you can again bring that plasticity back by moistening—this dance between two states, solid and soft, in perpetual motion."

Her fabrication process follows a rigorous sequence:

1. Modelling the base (often influenced by physical forces and gravity)
2. Carving the form
3. Refining surfaces and textures
4. Firing and glazing
5. Spatial installation and proportional review

The "Archive of Edges" and the "Mother Form"

Janovec’s portfolio is driven by recurring modules, most notably her signature "mother form." Created by violently beating clay against a work surface, the shape’s aerodynamic contour is dictated strictly by physics and gravitational G-force. Despite its elemental origin, the form evokes multiple associations: a seed, a floral bud, a delicate petal, or a primitive cutting tool.

Furthermore, Janovec refers to her body of work as an "archive of edges." Defining an edge as a mathematical plane where coordinates shift and differentiation occurs, she highlights series like The Study of An Edge. In these works, paper-thin planes are created by pulling a metal wire through a slab of clay—a simple, repetitive gesture that yields a rich, coherent family of individual variations.

Official Responses and Artist Statements

On the Language of Vessels and Cavities

Though her works originate from the simple motif of a vessel, Janovec deliberately avoids the word "vase," pushing back against the historical feminization and domestication of ceramics. Yet, she retains a deep reverence for the concept of containment:

"There is nothing more beautiful than a vessel; than to contain something. Somewhere in that process, that vessel stops being a vessel. It is a sort of cavity. I always want my work to have a hole, because the hole implies an inner space and inner life."

Drawing inspiration from the late Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue, Janovec connects this interior space to human psychology:

"He mentions that there is a place in each of us where you have never been wounded. For me, that is the cavity, symbolically."

On the Taboo of Beauty

In an art world that frequently treats beauty as a conservative or taboo subject, Janovec tackles the concept head-on, viewing it as an essential, healing force:

"For me to encounter beauty daily is non-negotiable. Sculpture until this point has been me paying attention to what I find beautiful, borrowing it and translating it. I want to do something beautiful because I believe beauty is healing. I think beauty is essential in knowing who we are."

On Repetition as Change

Rather than seeking sterile uniformity, Janovec embraces the poetic anomalies born from iterative production:

"There is a repetition that leads to sameness, and there is repetition that leads to change. I find that extremely poetic. Clay is such a particular material. It reacts to your mood. Sometimes it’s just me coming to the studio and being slightly sad or slightly impatient, and that translates."

Implications: Art, Bodybuilding, and the Cycles of Bloom

The deeper philosophical implications of Janovec’s work pull us back to the intersection of physical strain and aesthetic creation introduced by Kathy Acker.

For Janovec, heavy weightlifting is not merely a hobby, but one of the foundational pillars of her life. It shares the same meditative, cyclical DNA as her ceramic practice:

"It’s repetition—simple, but also beautiful and meditative. Acker compares bodybuilding to meditation, reducing it to breathing and counting over and again. By doing that, you change your body. And the fastest way for you to change your body with weightlifting is through failure. You have to rupture your muscles so they can heal. That’s a beautiful concept."

This embrace of structural vulnerability informs the ambiguous materiality of her glazed sculptures. When viewers ask whether her pieces are fashioned from wood or heavy metal, Janovec smiles and answers simply: No, it’s clay.

By courting ambiguity, celebrating fractures, and honoring the inevitable cycles of destruction and growth, Veronika Janovec’s sculptures achieve a rare feat. They do not merely represent ideas; they stand as physical testaments to the human capacity to break, heal, and bloom anew.