Photo: Marina Martinez Marin
( 1 ) While contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst have faced criticism for employing fabrication teams, collaboration and delegation have been central to artistic production for centuries. Renaissance painters such as Michelangelo and Titian relied on assistants for large-scale commissions and, as today, the arrangement provided both practical employment and a form of artistic education for emerging artists.
Behind The ScenesWhat does an art fabricator do?
Behind The ScenesWhat does an art fabricator do?
Artwork: Elmgreen & Dragset, Dilemma (2017). Courtesy of Elmgreen & Dragset and Ekebergparken. Photo: Florian Holzherr.
Sandra Stemmer and Holger Hönck founded their Berlin-based art fabrication agency, Stop Making Art, in 2018. While many fabricators specialize in a particular skill, such as casting bronze sculptures, Stemmer and Hönck see themselves more as consultants and advisors—they work hands-on to create the sculptures and installations that artists are unable to make themselves, but a big part of their role is as project managers, connecting the dots between artists, institutions and engineers. It’s an approach that was shaped through years of collaboration with the renowned duo Elmgreen & Dragset, particularly on Van Gogh’s Ear—a monumental swimming pool installed upright at Rockefeller Center in New York. “We thought, if we were able to do this, we can do it for other artists too,” says Stemmer.
Emily May: What kind of conversations do you have with artists? How much creative input do you have?
Sandra Stemmer: The conversations are very technical and about the aesthetic outcomes artists are looking for: “What material would you like to use? Do you know that’s very heavy? Did you know that if you want to polish stainless steel to look like a mirror, there are different grades of polishing that can be very expensive?” We work for the artists, so if they come with a crazy idea, we really try to make it happen.
Holger Hönck: We won’t say an idea is stupid or great. Our role is to be neutral. It’s really important for artists to have space to find their creations, and not to be pushed in a certain direction.
EM: What are some of the most challenging projects you’ve worked on recently?
SS: One of the toughest things we’ve had to do is mounting a massive, curved film screen for a showing of Lucy Raven’s Ready Mix (2021) at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie in 2024. We had to cover it with several layers of special reflective paint in situ. After the first layer, it seemed as if there had been a fog machine in the gallery—it activated an alarm and the fire service came! The museum was very supportive, but it was really stressful to be in an institution with so many valuable works and create such a mess.
HH: Last October, we installed a light sculpture by Monica Bonvicini in a university hospital in Denmark. Change to “It’s about 16 feet long, has almost 650 LED tubes and hangs in a stairwell. The structure was pretty lightweight, but the main problem was ensuring that switching it on didn’t trip the fuse in the entire building!
EM: Have you encountered any miscon-
ceptions about art fabrication?
HH: Sometimes people are disappointed to hear that artists don’t do everything by themselves.1 But the ideas come from the artists—that is the most important thing. They can’t produce 30-foot-high sculptures with their bare hands.
SS: The nature of artistic projects has become more expansive. Artists are expected to come up with big, room-filling concepts. It’s not just about making a painting that hangs on the wall anymore.
