Künstlerhaus Bethanien

Ane Mette Hol's creative work is concerned with the relations between the original, the photograph and the drawn reproduction. The artist makes use of objects already reproduced or mass-produced, such as photocopies, book covers or painter's masking paper and then copies or rather "re-produces" these as drawings. She painstakingly reproduces all the traces of use and wear displayed by the originals, however minimal, including scratches, stains or the marks of paper fasteners. Therefore the reproductions that Ane Mette Hol produces in this way, using a number of tools for drawing, are always independent creative inventions as well as imitations of already existing objects. The focal point of the exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien is Hol's animation film After Day and Night, made in 2010. This is shown as a projection. It is based on stills reproduced in drawing, which were taken from webcam recordings of an anonymous section of landscape including railway tracks and a railway tunnel with a road crossing over the top. Her drawings also show the changing light and weather conditions over the course of 24 hours. Later, the individual drawings were scanned onto the computer and joined to produce an animation film. The image of this is divided into two parts, representing two parallel cycles of 12 hours each. Its unusual length, which causes the viewer to despair somewhat – and also means that the film can never be shown in its full length during the gallery opening times – and the apparent lack of action make After Day and Night into the artist’s own reminiscences on Andy Warhol and his film Empire (1964), which was regarded for a long time as “impossible to watch” from the cineaste standpoint.

If one views After Day and Night as a conceptual work, however, it appears as a drawing that moves minimally - now and then in the film, one can see a train passing, a car or a pedestrian on the road -, and makes the viewer aware of transience and the passage of time. In addition, the exhibition in Künstlerhaus Bethanien shows a selection of the drawings on paper which Ane Mette Hol produced for the animation.

24th September - 10th October 2010 Tues - Sun, 2 - 7 pm Opening: Thursday, 23rd September 2009, from 7 pm Gallery spaces at Kottbusser Straße 10