Susanne M. Winterling Through the looking glass
05 Feb - 05 Apr 2010
From February to April 2010, the Badischer Kunstverein is presenting the solo exhibition Through the looking glass by Susanne M. Winterling. Winterling formulates her artistic work in a wide range of diverse media: from photographs past film, collages and objects all the way to space-encompassing installations and performances. With extreme sculptural sensitivity, she arranges these different materialities into constantly new and surprising constellations which react pointedly to the specific spatial situation of the respective exhibition room.
In the Badischer Kunstverein, Winterling develops a new series of spatial interventions which manifest a close relationship to the architecture and history of the Kunstverein. This critical investigation of the various emblems and spaces of the public image of the middle-class is furthermore connected with a fundamental motif of the exhibition, namely that of (female) adolescence on the threshold of individuation and self-discovery. Jewellery, porcelain figures and emblems of Punk- and Gothic-culture are only a few of the concrete references to the – also biographically motivated – obsessions of the teenage years.
Closely connected with these questions concerning one's own identity and personal imprinting is the setting up of a “Hall of Fame” in the Waldstraßensaal of the Kunstverein. Already in earlier works, Winterling has made reference to such female artists as Eileen Gray, Berenice Abbott or Annemarie Schwarzenbach, all of whom stand paradigmatically for women's struggle for autonomy and artistic freedom in a history of modernism which is dominated mostly by men. Winterling now brings these and other female role-models together for the first time and sparks the fame which they deserve.
In the Badischer Kunstverein, Winterling develops a new series of spatial interventions which manifest a close relationship to the architecture and history of the Kunstverein. This critical investigation of the various emblems and spaces of the public image of the middle-class is furthermore connected with a fundamental motif of the exhibition, namely that of (female) adolescence on the threshold of individuation and self-discovery. Jewellery, porcelain figures and emblems of Punk- and Gothic-culture are only a few of the concrete references to the – also biographically motivated – obsessions of the teenage years.
Closely connected with these questions concerning one's own identity and personal imprinting is the setting up of a “Hall of Fame” in the Waldstraßensaal of the Kunstverein. Already in earlier works, Winterling has made reference to such female artists as Eileen Gray, Berenice Abbott or Annemarie Schwarzenbach, all of whom stand paradigmatically for women's struggle for autonomy and artistic freedom in a history of modernism which is dominated mostly by men. Winterling now brings these and other female role-models together for the first time and sparks the fame which they deserve.