Maren Kloppmann

Maren Kloppmann (German, b. 1962) is a Minnesota-based artist renowned for her architectonic wall sculptures that blur the boundaries between craft, design, and fine art. Both her large and small-scale installations are studies in the divergent qualities of organic elements and man-made structures by creating a visual dialog between these two aesthetics. Serene in palette and refined in form, Kloppmann’s work strikes an elegant balance. She describes this reconciliation as “a visual confluence of serendipity and precision, where intuition and intention intersect.”

While acknowledging the influence of conceptual ideologies of Modernism and Minimalism, her sculptures arrive through Kloppmann’s mastery of clay employing a variety of ceramic techniques, including throwing, slab building, and coiling. The result yields work that appears at once rigid and soft, tangible and ethereal as well as systematic and random. She also focuses on the three-dimensional space her pieces will occupy often utilizing stable, contained forms in modular repetition. The juxtaposition of colored glazes creates soft tensions and accents the unique geometries.

Kloppmann studied Ceramics at the Ceramic Berufsfachschule (vocational school for Ceramics) in tandem with a three-year apprenticeship receiving her Journeyman status from the Bavarian Handwerkskammer in 1984. Kloppmann then moved to the United States receiving her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1993 and an MFA at the University of Minnesota in 1996. She is a three-time McKnight Fellowship recipient, and her awards include a Jerome Fellowship and five Minnesota State Arts Board Grants. Her work is represented in numerous private and museum collections including, Crocker Museum of Art, Sacramento CA, Frederik R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis MN, Herberger Museum of Art & Design, Tempe AZ, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City MO, and The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.