Ulla von Brandenburg
Two Times Seven
08 Apr - 13 May 2017
ULLA VON BRANDENBURG
Two Times Seven
8 April - 13 May 2017
From the 8th of April to 13th of May 2017, Art: Concept gallery is pleased to present its fourth personal exhibition by Ulla von Brandenburg (1974, Karlsruhe).
Curtains, quilts, costumes, ribbons... Fabric, or more precisely textile material, circulates and permeates Ulla von Brandenburg’s oeuvre, indiscriminately embedding characters and spaces within its aesthetic qualities. Operating modes, patterns and scales may change, but the textile presence is invariably reaffirmed. Beyond the play of materials, the aesthetic qualities and the spatial possibilities it offers, fabric is privileged by the artist for its place and role in the history of human civilization, seen through its most pragmatic functions as well as through the most highly symbolic ones. As socio-cultural, political and religious marker, it naturally connects Ulla von Brandenburg’s major themes: the worlds of theatre, folklore, and ritual.
Here it is more than ever celebrated and declined in all its aspects. In the first place, a film that presents a succession of veils or dresses of undetermined origin, opening one after the other to the passage of an absent but implicitly present body. A body signaled by an almost ghostly movement and by the voice of the soundtrack that recites and chants the letters of a poem by Wislawa Szymborska’s (1923, Kórnik -2012, Krakow) in its German translation*. Propelled in the reality of an exhibition space, these fabrics are spread out or fixed to the walls. Here again, a double movement of presence and absence can be perceived. Some have been previously dyed, leaving traces of their artisanal coloring on the ground; others, on the contrary, have been discolored by chlorine, thus revealing – in a process not far from that of the photogram - the imprint of a human-scale body movement. But what bodies, what movements are we talking about? Perhaps those of the characters, all issued from the world of theatre and performance, depicted on the watercolors on wood.
The shroud of mystery is beginning to lift, but not entirely. By means of metaphorical operations or chemical processes, each of these pieces seems to complement and fill in the voids of a text with holes, while only partially revealing their truth. The fabrics of the film succeed each other but do not open on anything other than more fabrics; the ones hanging on the wall evoke doors leading to another space but remain basically impassable. They question the nature of truth. Not saying that its search is vain, but perhaps signifying that it resides more in an infinite quest.
Julia Mossé / Translation Frieda Schumann
Born in 1974 in Karlsruhe, Ulla von Brandenburg lives and works in Paris. Her work develops itself in a variety of mediums and forms, on different scales and with the help of various media: films, performances, installations and objects, music, drawings ... If the ensemble draws inspiration from literature, art history and film, architecture and theater, it is a large and complex work that Ulla von Brandenburg builds, bringing human crafts and practices at the center. Showing great interest in popular ceremonies, minority societies and the subject of ritual in general, Ulla von Brandenburg creates images which gradually distance themselves from reality and shift our expectations.
Abstraction, collage, colorimetry, psychoanalysis, bodily and costume patterns, gesture as form are all research sources from which the artist nourishes her work. Her immersive and labyrinthine installations made of fabric, her upside-down architectures and workable wooden structures are designed as watching apparatuses for her films. Ulla von Brandenburg considers the viewer as an actor of the work, someone who takes part in its creation.
Her work is included in numerous collections including the Musée National d’Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou (Paris), Tate Modern (London), Kunsthalle Hamburg, and Mamco, Geneva. Recently, several exhibitions have been dedicated to her, among them shows at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (2017), at Power Plant, Toronto (2016) and at the ACCA / Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2016). In 2016, she was one of the four artists nominated to the Prix Marcel Duchamp
Two Times Seven
8 April - 13 May 2017
From the 8th of April to 13th of May 2017, Art: Concept gallery is pleased to present its fourth personal exhibition by Ulla von Brandenburg (1974, Karlsruhe).
Curtains, quilts, costumes, ribbons... Fabric, or more precisely textile material, circulates and permeates Ulla von Brandenburg’s oeuvre, indiscriminately embedding characters and spaces within its aesthetic qualities. Operating modes, patterns and scales may change, but the textile presence is invariably reaffirmed. Beyond the play of materials, the aesthetic qualities and the spatial possibilities it offers, fabric is privileged by the artist for its place and role in the history of human civilization, seen through its most pragmatic functions as well as through the most highly symbolic ones. As socio-cultural, political and religious marker, it naturally connects Ulla von Brandenburg’s major themes: the worlds of theatre, folklore, and ritual.
Here it is more than ever celebrated and declined in all its aspects. In the first place, a film that presents a succession of veils or dresses of undetermined origin, opening one after the other to the passage of an absent but implicitly present body. A body signaled by an almost ghostly movement and by the voice of the soundtrack that recites and chants the letters of a poem by Wislawa Szymborska’s (1923, Kórnik -2012, Krakow) in its German translation*. Propelled in the reality of an exhibition space, these fabrics are spread out or fixed to the walls. Here again, a double movement of presence and absence can be perceived. Some have been previously dyed, leaving traces of their artisanal coloring on the ground; others, on the contrary, have been discolored by chlorine, thus revealing – in a process not far from that of the photogram - the imprint of a human-scale body movement. But what bodies, what movements are we talking about? Perhaps those of the characters, all issued from the world of theatre and performance, depicted on the watercolors on wood.
The shroud of mystery is beginning to lift, but not entirely. By means of metaphorical operations or chemical processes, each of these pieces seems to complement and fill in the voids of a text with holes, while only partially revealing their truth. The fabrics of the film succeed each other but do not open on anything other than more fabrics; the ones hanging on the wall evoke doors leading to another space but remain basically impassable. They question the nature of truth. Not saying that its search is vain, but perhaps signifying that it resides more in an infinite quest.
Julia Mossé / Translation Frieda Schumann
Born in 1974 in Karlsruhe, Ulla von Brandenburg lives and works in Paris. Her work develops itself in a variety of mediums and forms, on different scales and with the help of various media: films, performances, installations and objects, music, drawings ... If the ensemble draws inspiration from literature, art history and film, architecture and theater, it is a large and complex work that Ulla von Brandenburg builds, bringing human crafts and practices at the center. Showing great interest in popular ceremonies, minority societies and the subject of ritual in general, Ulla von Brandenburg creates images which gradually distance themselves from reality and shift our expectations.
Abstraction, collage, colorimetry, psychoanalysis, bodily and costume patterns, gesture as form are all research sources from which the artist nourishes her work. Her immersive and labyrinthine installations made of fabric, her upside-down architectures and workable wooden structures are designed as watching apparatuses for her films. Ulla von Brandenburg considers the viewer as an actor of the work, someone who takes part in its creation.
Her work is included in numerous collections including the Musée National d’Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou (Paris), Tate Modern (London), Kunsthalle Hamburg, and Mamco, Geneva. Recently, several exhibitions have been dedicated to her, among them shows at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (2017), at Power Plant, Toronto (2016) and at the ACCA / Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2016). In 2016, she was one of the four artists nominated to the Prix Marcel Duchamp