“Galerie Nord”
You are cordially invited to the vernissage
Kunstportale: Balmoral at Galerie Nord
Sonja Alhaeser</b>, Goez Diergarten, Stefan Ettlinger, Natalie Bewernitz / Marek Goldowski, Misha Le Jen, Martine Locatelli, Ingeborg Lockemann, Cornelia Rössler, Christiane Schlosser, Nicola Schudy, Anja Teske, Barbara Thaden, Myrtia Wefelmeier, Renate Wolff
On August the 1st 2007, 19.30 at Galerie Nord — Kunstverein Tiergarten, Turmstrasse 75, Berlin
Works by 14 artists from the artists’ residence, Künstlerhaus Schloß Balmoral in Bad Ems (Rhineland-Palatinate), will be exhibited at Galerie Nord from the 2nd of August to the 31st of August 2007. The exhibition presents what proved to be a particularly diverse scholarship year in 2006/2007, due to a variety of awards by Künstlerhaus Schloß Balmoral, residency awards, the project award and international scholarships.
The exhibits, which were created from the artists’ impressions of the various places they were staying during their scholarship, illustrate a multitude of artistic viewpoints. While Goetz Diergarten discovered visual motives reminiscent of colour-field-painting in London’s underground stations, it was the noise of the New York subway that inspired the media artists Bewernitz/Goldowski to create a sound installation.
The performance and drawing artist Sonja Alhaeser used her project scholarship to construct buffets with no apparent connection to a place. The latest “Emsrausch” event at Balmoral could have taken it up with lavish baroque festivals. Lockemann, Wolff and Locatelli were inspired by their surroundings: Ingeborg Lockemann followed the tracks of old German buses in Accra. The video shows a high-contrast superimposition depicting the German and African history of the bus. The spatial painter Renate Wolff ventured to make a photographic excursion in Bad Ems to photograph the life of the spa town as seen in the shop-windows. A confusing puzzle is brought about on various spatial levels by virtue of fusing the interior with the mirrored exterior of the windows. Martine Locatelli was fascinated by sunsets and has assembled 100 photographs in a romantic embodiment of the sky, that expresses a desire for graphic effects.
Landscape is also the subject chosen by Nicola Schudy and Stefan Ettlinger. Nicola Schudy’s water colours show segments of landscapes and make visible the destructive traces of human intervention in the natural idyll. Stefan Ettlingers paintings are assembled landscape panoramas comprised of video stills from the mass media as well as his own photos of his environment. Through montage and cross-fading surrealistic, almost intangible scenarios are created.
The works of the Paris-based artist Barbara Thaden (guest at Balmoral) can also lay claim to be surrealistic. Sewing pieces of clothing together she makes art objects which as Dress-Art confound their original function, and gain a new aesthetic status in a different context.
A series of works concentrate on the human body, which is expressed in a variety of disciplines. The texture Cornelia Roessler explores in her light boxes is the human skin, its structure, tangibility and changeability. More cheerful appear the photographs by Anja Teske: intimate pictures of a transsexual friend, “Juwelia”, whom she observes closely, but from a respectful distance. The series represents the complexity of his existence and points to the discrepancy between desire and reality. Myrtia Wefelmeier paints children from historical photographs that she places in staged architectural backgrounds and woodland sceneries. At the same time, the atmosphere oscillates constantly between familiarity and alienation and directs you into an uncanny visual space.
For the winner of the arts prize awarded by the Balmoral 03 e.V. (registered fundraising association), the action artist Misha Le Jen, it is the body that is the instrument of his actions, which mainly feature the element of water. In Bad Ems he realized the work “Becken”, which alludes as well to the womb as to the basin.
The abstract pictures by Christiane Schlosser are distinguished by their lightness and rhythm. Often assembled into installations, it is a work that inscribes itself in the flow of time, an ornament that picks up on its own rhythm. As a result of this sensitive, discursive textures and colour annotations arise.
For more information consult our homepage www.balmoral.de
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