MIXED EMOTIONS - MIXED FEELINGS
The juxtaposition of a selection of works by sculptor Christopher Biederbick and video artists Ulrike Rosenbach, Risk Hazekamp, Judith Barry Ute Friederike-Jürss, Teresa Margolles, AK Dolven, Sigalit Landau, gives us the opportunity to comment on the relevant, current social issues from the point of view to learn from artists, the social role understanding and representation the woman by a specific artistic and aesthetic sensibility of the visual artists is being expressed.
A special role is played by the different emotional categories that are treated by both artists, and the reactions can be triggered off by the viewer through the works of art. "Mixed emotions / mixed feelings," thus providing us a new territory of new fields of experience of emotional and cognitive thinking.
Curated by Bodo Rau
exhibition at the Kunsthalle Brennabor in Brandenburg-Havel
of 03 December 2010 to 14th Of January 2011
Kunshalle Brennabor
Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 10-13
14776 Brandenburg an der Havel
opening times: Wednesday to Sunday 13-19 Clock
The exhibition is realized with DA2 Domus Artium 2002, Fundación Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura. We thank the sponsor Kunstiftung Christopher and Nicholas Schües
MIXED EMOTIONS-MIXED FEELINGS
plastic versus video - Works by Christa Biederbick in comparison with international works of contemporary artists
The sculptor Christa Biederbick one of the outstanding representatives of humanism and a critical reflection of social-oriented figurative sculpture in the present. Since the seventies of the 20th Century it has - in addition to many years of teaching - created a comprehensive work that has appeared in numerous solo and group shows significant. She has participated in several international symposia and executed sculptures for public spaces - especially in Berlin. Last year saw the catalog of works and this year celebrates the artist's seventieth birthday. With the exhibition "Mixed feelings - Mixed Emotions' also has a small, but representative insight into her sculptural work, which can certainly indicate a large diversity in their design aesthetic continuity of position only. The second, almost analogous part of an exhibition of video works by seven international artists opened compared the possibility of parallels and differences between various media and generations to find and thus sharpen the view for the work of Christa Biederbick.
Biederbick Christa, born in 1940 in Balve / Westphalia, after studying in Dortmund, Münster and Berlin, first emerged as a painter and graphic artist before they all moved to the sculpture. Especially in the beginning they used the new material for sculpting plastic in the form of the polyester. Later, shall be additional wood - both materials in the way most colored. As the sculptor from the outset by a theatrical groups and environments designed, other materials are also included. Biederbick has one of the first sculptors and one of the few women consistently explores the special qualities of expression of the polyester. At the same time draw shapes and themes to choose their work from a female perspective pointedly that can in its clarity and integrity are exemplary.
much the sculpture of the pop art and other contemporary trends Neo offered Christa Biederbick important ideas, especially as the realism of the Dutch and German late medieval sculpture. Biederbick realism is indeed the seventies in the years in West Berlin dominant so-called critical realism used, but their work is the rather magical realism of the North German artist group closer to ZEBRA, a member of the artist since 1976 also. takes the place of idealization on-screen, from naturalistic picture or image in her expressive distortions, a carefully and intensively reflective after-image of man in today's reality, they autonomously design elements such as shape, color, size, structure and material developed.
Man is at the center. It is suggested the sculptor through newspaper photos, private photos and sketches, memories and images of other art forms Christa It Biederbick plastic human images that can be the "human condition after the outer shell" to become visible. The absence of a base generates close to life, which is due to the inclusion of real or postformed furniture such as chairs, armchairs, sofa, bench, table and air mattress or the plastic suggestion of spatial elements converted into situational. Indicated by the inclusion of multiple characters and objects narrative element is replaced in the most recent object installations surreal features. While Christa Biederbick polyester sculptures mostly by life-size and subtle surface design an individual, but also alienated and point to intuition-scale counterpart, are characterized since 1980 increasingly created wooden sculptures, which are usually slightly larger than life size and are formed into voluminous stylized simplification, as figures of thought ", which more general problems can appear to the human condition.
Christa Biederbick work includes individual characters as well as couples and groups. Both in relations between the persons represented, and in its external shape and in the relationship between figure and space are cross-recognized typical elements. In polyester sculptures like "Girl on a red cloth" (1971-1972), "Woman at the Table" (1975-1976) and "Sitting Girl" (1981) directed Biederbick the view of women as individuals in the private sphere. The "writer" (1993-1995) be working situation and age into account. The two figural constellation is in the works of Biederbick in various forms. Relationship between two people in the narrow sense appears in "Couple" (1976) as unequal gender and vulnerable tension between husband and wife. A special role in the play mehrfigurige Biederbick work on their own experiences in Italy declining "procession" (1977-79) and terracotta sculpture "Funebre" (2009-2010), deals in which she deals with religious practices and everyday rituals. The selection shown here, focuses on the topic of women, which runs like a thread through the work of the artist. Others, also often absorbed by their subjects are not taken into account, such as the representation of the man, the importance of leisure and sport for the contemporary man and the reflection of history and violence in the mirror of her own experiences, and media information.
The work of Christa Biederbick is located in three dimensions. After early Painting and drawing in addition to occasional digressions and sculpture are clearly in the center, in recent years expanded to include objects and installations, but do not alter the main body of the work significantly. The existing sculptures selected for the exhibition - with one exception - made of polyester. The set works in relation to the seven artists based on the medium of the video, which was developed since the sixties of the last century as a new art form. Ulrike Rosenbach from Germany and Judith Barry from the U.S. as the two oldest are among the pioneers. The video forms usually only one facet of their work, which is also true for other artists: AK Dolven from Iceland, Ute Friederike Jürß from Germany, Teresa Margolles from Mexico, Sigalit Landau from Israel and Risk Hazekamp, the youngest of the participants, from the Netherlands . They often work includes photography, performance and installation, sometimes in close substantive contexts or media mix.
sculpture and video to match media as well as painting / drawing and photography. While the latter are applied two-dimensional and three-dimensionality exists only virtually, sculpture and video belong to space - albeit in different Way. Especially in the early days when video art was hardly as a subject, particularly sculptors were interested in this new medium, which is also suitable as a documentation tool for performances, and other time-based arts space. While plastic and spatial design of sculpture in a real object materialized penetrate in which different layers of time, in the video real objects and people with the camera in a too time-real or recorded by cutting newly assembled sequence in conceptual and creative aspects, supplemented by the inclusion of real acoustic sounds or music. This creates a work that is characterized by the synaesthetic unity definition of image, movement and sound. While is added at the front desk of a plastic by the most possible, and necessary consideration of all sides of a temporal component, the video unfolds as a screen or large screen each other in relation to the respective space: it affects, or those enrolled in the contemplation of the videos. Not least the players themselves have plastic character, which certainly favors the formation of the subgenres video sculpture.
In the work of Christa Biederbick man is the central theme, the human figure, the main subject. This applies also to the work of other artists, even if that is not evident Teresa is like Margolles. The focus is on Christa Biederbick also the image of women, which also characterizes the work of other artists. This includes clearly a preoccupation with the body of the woman, whose image for centuries was subject to the prevailing patriarchal patterns. While Biederbick takes its models to the closest living environment or the media, the younger artists often refer back to itself, so much in a portrait-like than symbolic meaning. Nakedness and intimacy are also brought into play, such as gender roles and social relations. The inclusion of one's own identity in its various psychological and social aspects as an aesthetic object of negotiation emphasizes the emotional element in the works of all artists and gives them an existential character. designed
In the seventies Christa Biederbick mostly single female characters, girls and young women who spun in unprotected nakedness in itself. For girl on a red cloth (1971-1972) in dyed polyester, the artist commented: "The sculpture I modeled after a drawing that was created in 1970 at the Grunewald. Drawings of lying, sitting, standing and bathers were for many years always inspiration for my sculptures. "The easy-to rectangular, with drape curled free-standing bath towel girl is naked, the head is almost bald. The body has a slight S-shape, the back is rounded, bulging belly. Implied blonde hair and colored pupils are the only colorful accents. From every perspective the viewer gains the shape of new presentation techniques. Everything points to restraint, even in indecision: it looks graceful and fragile, but also austere and closed.
The woman at the table (1975-1976) of Christa Biederbick , according to a newspaper photo from a mental hospital, also made of dyed polyester, is in unusual position: She leans in semi-squatting, half-kneeling position with extremely bent arms on a table made of transparent Plexiglas, his head hanging between the two hands to turn, his eyes slightly lowered, directed into the indefinite. Outstanding color accents, the black hair. Pupils, lips and pubic triangle are also color coded. While the motive constellation wife and furniture a pop-art artists such as Allen Jones with hat stand, table and chair (1969, Ludwig Forum for International Art, Aachen) animated in a lying between satire and provocation scandalous depiction of sexual compliance, it has at Christa Biederbick one in content and form completely different, non-voyeuristic view found. Your attitude expresses helplessness, isolation, vulnerability and hopelessness.
The naked female body is also in the video b etween the morning and the handbag (2002) of AK Dolven in the center. Born 1953 in Oslo, AK Dolven living on the Lofoten Islands and in London. In her work she connects to the closest painting and video art, where they converted the aesthetic principles of traditional technology in the modern media apparatus. Including Between the morning and the handbag, as it is a tableau, as a moving statue, created, whose motive constellation remains unchanged. The camera captures AK Dolven a rear view of the naked, apparently members of a loose body in the water sitting, shaved wife and a handbag in the same place. Throughout the four-minute duration of the video does not change the setting. filmed at the rising sun, except the gentle wave motion and the almost imperceptible breathing body only the changing of light as the change is visible. The light thus functions as a kind of calculations shape tool, while the human figure is equivalent to a sculpture without individuation. Quiet and strangely timeless, both funny and absurd act and thing man, woman and a fashion accessory and invite them to reflect on independence and social pressures, self-determination and sex, in-house and external perception one.
different but comparable has recorded Christa Biederbick in their polyester plastic Sitting Girl (1981) the subject seated and subject matter. Living on photographs of their daughter going back motif of the seated on a chair naked child from the contrast between the simple wood furniture with a tattered seat fabric and the delicate slender, twisted body of the girl. It has turned back so that hang their legs a little in the air. Hand and arm resting on the back, in the amount of which is also the chin of the head. Colour accents are the pupils and the strong back of the head covering the blonde hair. Like inquiringly, as if looking back Helping attitude of thoughtful, facing away from the surrounding view, indicate uncertainty as to how they characterize the problems of adolescents. All three figures by Christa Biederbick - the standing that at the table and sitting - Despite their nakedness not primarily erotic, by the uniformly bright, smooth representation of the skin rather cool. The clear, the whole body detection modeling, restrained emotion and inward-looking reflection give the viewer a kind of tenderness, the compassion and respect mixed with the idea of conflict.
The issue of mother and child Christa Biederbick recorded several times in various forms, without himself to the gallery. In with Yolanda Rica (1994-1997) it takes a few illustrations in wood, the subject of mother and child now in a more realistic character again after some time. Both characters are named cast of dyed polyester and made down in the details of the folds of skin and clothes, but the uniformly pale dual color creates distance. The arrested with a headscarf and sandals throughout the life-born woman, a friend from Sicily, holds a firm grip on the child that she stretches out his arms and smiles at him. Mother and child are at the same height, the care of the elderly is gripping and energetic, the young and well taken care.
The artist Ulrike Rosenbach , born 1943 in Bad Salzdetfurth and living in Cologne, is one of the most important international video and performance artists. Their criticism of the traditional representation of women from a feminist perspective determines their work since the earliest videos, which she sees as "documents of her inner life." Wrapping with Julia (1972) consists of a single five-minute black and white setting, in which they appear themselves and their five year old daughter to electronically distorted breathing patterns. Both are naked, daughter sits on the womb of the mother, the body gradually envelops both with gauze bandages. The unusual in the concept of evolution called symbolic action is the close, so fateful "entanglement" of mother and child - even after birth and Entnabelung. How closely the two lives are connected, how much "development" for the mutual free development possible, it is the simple representation of emphasis without much room for thought.
The colored polyester performed in Couple (1976) of Christa Biederbick shows the strong grown man naked muscular upper body, long red mane and black Leather pants slightly similar to a simple, brightly-painted iron railing. The straight, standing on high heels woman has long black, above the forehead just cut hair. The light blue dress emphasizes her slender body. The railing acts as a barrier that marks the scene as a battle of the sexes. While the woman with wide open eyes like frightened into the distance, looks with one hand laid by the wind puffed skirt is expressed and the other timidly for comparison, is aimed prevented the almost great-looking man with legs apart to her, including her body with his left arm, his lips touched her shoulder. What appears to embrace proves to be conquer gesture as an attempt to take possession, the violent gesture is further accentuated by the uneven body.
The meeting of two people is the theme of the video Gay King (2005) of Risk Hazekamp . Born in 1972 in The Hague artist lives in Rotterdam and Berlin in photographs and films dealing with the stereotypes that determine the image of man and woman, of male and female sexuality, and their hybrids. Often the artist is to see itself, which appears in its' location decisions, "as she calls her works on the search for identity in different role-plays. meet in Gay King two drag kings, that women in male attire and attitude, each other, happens to be gay, and kissing. Only toward the end of the artist himself appears to add a passionate "(Cow) and boy-boy-kiss" with the King of the film. Sex assignments come here in a playful manner by each other and undermine the rigid social and cultural patterns as dominant and normative influence.
Also in the plastic The silent twins (1995-2003) of Christa Biederbick consisting of polyester and in gray, and partly also kept white and brown colors, is a relationship between two people and their integration into the social environment to bear albeit under entirely different conditions. The illustration is from a newspaper article about two mute twins (one of whom died 1994) suggested. Christa Biederbick writes: "Four years ago they stopped speaking. You are chained in a non-mental agony to be resolved together. With the onset of puberty, they are interested in the writing, and write poems and novels. With the neighborhood boys to commit arson and robbery and drugs. sentenced as a criminal psychopath inside, they come to the prison Broadmoor in England. Marjorie Wallace reported in their book, The silent twins. "The artist brings the two barely distinguishable from each other young girls in tight-fitting pants suits and turtlenecks side by side in the same position with its arms. Their faces are serious and reserved. The wait-, inactive and a mirror image of this position can imagine the difficulties that the close genetic ties opposes the social action of individuals. theme
The individual and his relationship to the lives of Judith Barry, born in 1954 in Columbus, Ohio, and living in New York and Berlin, in her video First and Third (1987). One of Not Reconciled, a series made for years told stories from different Countries and cultures. First and Third This is the first projects, hence people come to speak, who immigrated to the United States, people from a world that is brought in the perspective of the world's leading nation in third place among developed and economically dependent on the Western scale. To concentrate on the content of what is heard beyond the individual phenomenon may have Judith Barry faces of actors who speak the text, taken from close proximity, so that they appear to be floating in a dark environment. In the stories appear on the expectations, hopes, promises and prejudices that are in the everyday experiences of new residents with the hard reality were confronted. As fragmentary, even contradictory and contentious products penetrate the "talking heads" a memory and to provide the human element to the fore, the concern and possible identification with the Other.
The writer (1993-1995) designs Christa Biederbick the form of a woman at the end of their lives. Template is a photograph of the writer Agatha Christie, has been acquired primarily as a world-renowned mystery writer, on the front page of the supplement of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit (9/14/1990). The artist writes about her sculpture, which is not meant as a portrait, "My work is an Writer in very advanced age dar. She does not look of age - in body shape, posture and in its very wrinkled face. Her eyes looked self-conscious - curiosity - vitality. She has maintained itself, applied a little rouge, a colored dress, jewelry created. A hand on a book. This is to show that she is still with reading, writing, 'and so busy living life is with her serious personality. "The scene is on a square base plate arranged diagonally. The white-haired protagonist sits slightly reclined in a chair next to her is a table with books. The blue of the dress can the figure appear slim and casual, comfortable slippers, the simple point to intimacy and privacy. Nevertheless indicate the shiny exterior, the open, energetic face and close to to books that sit here not an old woman, but a well-read older lady, very well own, but also very vital. The issue raised is the author of the elderly, age and aging in the face of an aging population and the so-called population pyramid in the Western world an active, problem-fraught topic. It also forms the other side of the postwar era has been constantly growing youth cult - by the then beatniks to today's kids and Models.
set too common body images also Ute Friederike Jürß with I and I (2003) a counterpoint. The 1962 born in Wiesbaden artist who lives in Lübeck, presents in her video work called a double self-portrait. Only vaguely protruding from a deep dark, her face is visible, the aging independently in about a two minute rhythm to end up returning to the starting position. The natural flow of time appears to be repealed, the art opens a possible glimpse into the future. Ute Friederike Jürß not trying in his own image, the art recipient of external to convince beauty and permanence or timelessness to suggest, but in a forward-looking digression makes clear that life is change, that life is also inscribed in the body and leaves traces. The artist makes use of techniques of image editing, not to be brought to conceal the reality, but to experimentally illustrate the existential character of the people and the dimension of the particular and inward expression.
In the recent work Funebre (2009-2010), of Christa Biederbick older women are involved, modeled after a newspaper photo of the funeral a murdered woman in San Luca / Iatlien. This time, highlighted by attributes and not individually, but as a group, a subject that they dealt with in this work following the procession. In both works, the artist on suggestions that arise from their regular visits to Italy, mostly rural, have more traditional regions. Funebre is - molded in terra cotta and features a group of eight women - unlike the rest of her sculptures in this exhibition. There are mourners, participants of a funeral, which - starting from the main view of the sculpture - staggered in three rows behind each other, partly from the front, partly visible from the side. Stummer Distinguished from pain on their faces. They remain motionless, petrified. The artist emphasizes this attitude of dismay and rigid, fused by the broader dark clothing and the weight of the material .. The tight group asked the podium with a dark, melancholy memorial.
To death and burial, it is also in the video by Teresa Margolles . Born in 1963 in Culiacán / Sinaloa artists living in Mexico City, was one in the nineties of the last century to the group SEMEFO whose name is derived from the forensic medical service. Their base was to speak, the morgue, in a metropolis like the Mexican capital at the same time Burning mirror of social conditions. Issues such as violence, death, funeral, but also organs and plastic surgery in Mexico also shape the individual work of Teresa Margolles, often shocking object installations from material elements, reminiscent of the (dead) body. Your video Crematorio (2003) provides insight into the incinerator of a crematorium for anonymous corpses - mostly victims of violence and disease. While Christa Biederbick Funebre as it left the deceased in the faces of the mourners in their footsteps, appears black framed round stove door, burn up in the loop as a human corpse in the fire storm, as terrifying, elemental Metaphor for the industrial use of those who were eliminated already in the life of the party.
Christa Biederbick procession (1977-1979) is a group of eleven figures. The artist writes about the emergence of "cause for this group of figures was a Good Friday procession on a Sicilian island. This procession was carried out by very few people who know each other, almost a family. It communicates with views over the spectacle that has a peculiar fascination and in which the photograph can also be happy. But the feelings are not so clear: Everyone is trying on his way to play the role the religious act, which require traditional customs. There is here an indissoluble mixture of faith for us and feigned credulity. That this must be a problem, leads the priest before professional. "The place was in Ginostra on Stromboli observed event, the early seventies, took part along with the artist (it is the left rear woman in her plastic) and her husband ( as a photographer), because not enough young people to get involved were available. Consisting of Italy and other Catholic societies typical procession from a long train, led by a male person, a great plain Cross holds. Behind him, four women who have a stretcher with a Christ figure in a glass coffin, followed by a priest and three men with a statue of the Madonna. The dark clothing lets the bright white faces and the legs of the mini skirt wearing women stand out in contrast and bring very different moods and attitudes expressed. A particular tension in the artistic representation is created by combining apparently living and dead figures, the latter are in reality too artificial to aesthetic criteria established figures - namely, religious sculptures, which are central to the Christian liturgy.
The rite of solemn Schreiter Christa Biederbick plastic sticks to something dark and spooky, which also characterizes the video Barbed Hula (2001) of Sigalit Landau , although it is in a completely different context. The artist, born 1969 in Jerusalem, who lives in Paris and Tel Aviv used in their work, which relates to the body art of the seventies, often his own body as a testing ground and the object of socio-political reflection. In Barbed Hula she herself is seen naked on the beach near Tel Aviv, only her head remains invisible. Instead of a Hula-Hoop, the modern, plastic fabricated version of the former wooden toy tire in the last fifty been years in fashion and recently rediscovered as a sports instrument, Sigalit Landau can swing a tire made of barbed wire around her bare waist. Although the spines are directed to the outside, but in an irregular turning it painful penetrate into the body. The self-injury inflicted, Landau, perpetuated by the constant repetition of the barely two-minute video, go under the skin. Barbed wire, as it prefigured in the biblical crown of thorns is usually violent exclusion or defense. The artist as deputy martyr out in front of her allusion to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, like the endless violence, as in a macabre ritual continues a vicious circle is to break out seems almost impossible. Sculpture and video art created character and acting on camera body (sometimes part of a performance), are equally expressions of touching and moving works of art as the works of all eight participating artists perform impressively in mind.
Text
Michael Nungesser, art historian
Michael Nungesser, art historian
Berlin, 31 October 2010
