February 24–March 19, 2023
Kottbusser Strasse 10
10999 Berlin
Germany
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 2–7pm
info@bethanien.de
Kerstin Flake
Flake’s photo series Shaking Surfaces (2018–2021) shows household furniture and analogue media relics that appear to move autonomously, as suggested by their blurred outlines. Playing with viewers’ expectations, Flake invites us to contemplate the continuous variations of meaning suggested by her riotous domestic mise-en-scènes.
Frenzy Höhne
Höhne’s works consist of largely empty surfaces with the text line “Picture could contain…” appearing at the upper edge of the painting. Their shadow-gap framing and conceptual hanging is modelled on the Facebook user interface.
In the exhibition, this series is shown in dialogue with Denkmal (Monument, 2012). The painterly lightness of the coloured surface contrasts with the physical coarseness of the sculptural plinth. Höhne thus stages a semantical clash between our desire to capture the fleeting moment and the essential finiteness of being.
Lea Kunz
Lea Kunz’s surprising images of stretching, leaning, contorted bodies and bizarrely pointed fingers are phenomenal. They confront viewers with variously tangled poses of young models, seemingly randomly assembled from the body parts of women, men and a furless pet in domestic or outdoor settings. In her ongoing series Nude, the artist undermines conventional representations of the naked body. Her photographs of almost surreal body constellations are poetic statements on human emotional modes of being. Kunz’s assemblages open up the realm of possibilities because they effortlessly challenge commonly accepted standards.
Remofiloe Nomandla Mayisela
Remofiloe Nomandla Mayisela’s series Lip Service (2022) takes its cue from the infamous saying that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” to explore patriarchal dominance, stereotypical notions of femininity, and domesticity as a locus of power imbalances.
In Enigma (2021), the artist uses found photographic material, mainly from anonymous photo albums, to create new, near-surrealistic collages.
Mathilda Olmi
Combining intimate portraits, nudes and still lifes, Mathilda Olmi’s project Rosa Canina (2021) invites us to question the way we represent and look at the female body. Her work, in which she pairs images of bodies with close-ups of nature, draws on ecofeminist theories that relate the exploitation of nature to the oppression of women. After being actively engaged in various forms of feminist struggle for several years, the artist today explores these issues through her work.
Björn Siebert
Since 2006, Björn Siebert has been developing an ongoing series of large-format photographs in which he meticulously reconstructs amateur images taken from the Internet. Its title, Remake, is borrowed from film theory, highlighting the central importance of repetition in the artist’s work. His minute stagings replicate the original image in order to question its underlying mechanisms. By translating the “essence” of small digital snapshots into large analogue photographs, Siebert tries to unravel the mystery and symbolism of the amateur photographs, while lending his replicas a life of their own as viewers are deprived of the original image and its context.
Jan Sobottka
Since 2004, Jan Sobottka, who started his artistic career as a painter, has been dedicating his time to documenting the Berlin art scene as a photographer. During his spontaneous gallery and museum tours, he photographs exhibition openings, events and artists in their studios. In parallel, he also works as a portrait photographer in his own premises.
In the course of his documentary project, which has been ongoing for over 18 years, Sobottka has met countless people, many of whom he keeps encountering over and over. This has allowed him to build relationships of trust between himself and the people he portrays.
Anett Stuth
In her recent series Time Loops (2021–2023), Anett Stuth photographs, collages and decollages fragments of nature, plant and animal objects, and remains from a recent and prehistoric past.
The artist’s series offer a condensed reflection on the sublimity and simultaneous destruction of nature as well as on the staging of natural objects. In her photographic collages, historical and contemporary images or references to nature are assembled and related to our present civilisation.
