Katja Strunz
18 Oct - 22 Nov 2007
KATJA STRUNZ
"GUTEN MORGEN ERWACHEN"
Each part of this exhibition is a constructive fragment. The fragments are representations of relics which, as dream-time, fall into our present.
"Historical time is the dimension of constant destruction; space, however, is a dimension of the new." (1)
In this sense, the works are containers of an historical dialectic which, in remembering what has been, seeks the now of the present.
Nothing seems to put Katja Strunz' artistic work into words better than Walter Benjamin's writings. It is the isotropic coincidence of present and past which makes the philosopher omnipresent in her oeuvre. It is obviously manifest in the selection of her materials which are indeed aged, partly come from the past, and have evaded it in her work.
But Strunz' work would not be what it is if the "rag collector on Benjamin's trail" (2) did not also pursue the tactic, with a quiet smile, of tricking her recipients: rust and patina are sometimes no more than a few days old.
Strunz' works do not by any means wallow in sweet dreams about the past.Sharp-edged abstraction and modernism determine the appearance of her art works which grow impressively and threateningly in expansive mural compositions. As Benjamin describes, "The origin is in the flux of becoming as an eddy, and tears the material from which it is made into its rhythm". (3)
(1) Opitz, Michael (ed.): Benjamins Begriffe. Frankfurt/M. 2000 Vol. 1 p. 161.
(2) Hudson, Suzanne: Eine zweite Gegenwart der Vergangenheit. In: Katja Strunz. London 2007 p. 19.
(3) Benjamin, Walter: Gesammelte Schriften. eds. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann
"GUTEN MORGEN ERWACHEN"
Each part of this exhibition is a constructive fragment. The fragments are representations of relics which, as dream-time, fall into our present.
"Historical time is the dimension of constant destruction; space, however, is a dimension of the new." (1)
In this sense, the works are containers of an historical dialectic which, in remembering what has been, seeks the now of the present.
Nothing seems to put Katja Strunz' artistic work into words better than Walter Benjamin's writings. It is the isotropic coincidence of present and past which makes the philosopher omnipresent in her oeuvre. It is obviously manifest in the selection of her materials which are indeed aged, partly come from the past, and have evaded it in her work.
But Strunz' work would not be what it is if the "rag collector on Benjamin's trail" (2) did not also pursue the tactic, with a quiet smile, of tricking her recipients: rust and patina are sometimes no more than a few days old.
Strunz' works do not by any means wallow in sweet dreams about the past.Sharp-edged abstraction and modernism determine the appearance of her art works which grow impressively and threateningly in expansive mural compositions. As Benjamin describes, "The origin is in the flux of becoming as an eddy, and tears the material from which it is made into its rhythm". (3)
(1) Opitz, Michael (ed.): Benjamins Begriffe. Frankfurt/M. 2000 Vol. 1 p. 161.
(2) Hudson, Suzanne: Eine zweite Gegenwart der Vergangenheit. In: Katja Strunz. London 2007 p. 19.
(3) Benjamin, Walter: Gesammelte Schriften. eds. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann