Bettina Pousttchi: Protection

Curator: Roland Wäspe

Under the title Protection, the internationally renowned artist Bettina Pousttchi (*1971) has created a setting of new works specifically for the Lokremise building of the Kunstmuseum St.Gallen. A characteristic feature of the works presented in the exhibition is Pousttchi’s examination of the given space’s physical conditions and the social, cultural, and sociopolitical factors that determine and structure it. Working at the formal and material intersection of photography and sculpture, the Berlin-based artist explores the connection between systems of time and space in a global perspective.

Bettina Pousttchi works with commonly found, functional street furniture used in cities around the world. Street bollards, bicycle racks, and, in her latest series, tree protection barriers are the starting point for her sculptures presented in this exhibition, which are shaped by means of mechanical bending, pressing and twisting. 

This process leaves their original function behind and makes them a witness to an event that we inevitably associate with our own experience in urban space. The tree protection barriers are recognizable in their altered form, and the forces that might have affected the object can be reconstructed. Through the context of their use, Pousttchi’s sculptures have a strong anthropological connection. In their sequence they evoke the movement of dancers, although the volume of the sculpture results entirely from the line. The moss or light green color is reminiscent of camouflage or protective coloring, thus enhancing the optical merger of the individual parts into a self-contained form. 

At the center of the exhibition are two large-scale, suspended photographs showing the former Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York, an icon of contemporary architecture by Detroit architect Minoru Yamasaki (1912-1986). With the twenty-one-meter-long prints of her new work World Trade (2018), Bettina Pousttchi brings the façade of this world-famous building into an interior setting. At the intersection between the photographic image and architecture the artist explicitly addresses social and political issues, which play a central role in her work. 

Bettina Pousttchi became known for her large-scale photographic interventions on public buildings, which are related to the urban and historic context of each particular place. Her monumental photo installation Echo covered the entire façade of the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin (2009/2010) and formed a continuous motif recalling the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic). 

At the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the artist presented the site-specific photo installation Framework (2012) in its rotunda and on its eastern façade. In 2014, Bettina Pousttchi transformed the Nasher Sculpture Center Dallas into a Drive-Thru Museum referencing the site’s history and the architecture of the Renzo Piano building. The City (2014) covered three sides of Wolfsburg castle with a 2,150 square meter photographic print of a transnational skyline. 

Recent solo exhibitions by Bettina Pousttchi include the Arts Club of Chicago (2017), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Washington DC (2016) and the Phillips Collection Washington DC (2016) and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas (2014).