Catherine Bastide

NATALIE CZECH
Hidden Poems
25 November, 2011 - 21 January, 2012

In her photographic works, Natalie Czech examines the relationship between text and image, looking at how words evoke and interpret images, while also investigating questions of authorship, subjectivity, documentation, and contextualization. In 2010 she received the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Award for Contemporary Photography for her ongoing series, Hidden poems. Illustrated pages from magazines, newspapers or picture books provide the raw materials for this series. Natalie Czech highlights individual letters and words in the respective texts to reveal the existence of a 'hidden' poem. The poems come from, among others, E.E. Cummings, Jack Kerouac and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann. Like a quick thought—a literary snapshot—they appear within the context of the page, rattling the semantic integrity of the original text. The result is a text within the text, which, like a coded message or an unconscious impulse, unsettles the very fabric of the text within which it is inscribed. Natalie Czech (b. 1976) lives and works in Berlin. She has received numerous awards and scholarships, her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Europe and the USA. They have been recently exhibited, among others, at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf and at C/O Berlin. In the upcoming months works by Natalie Czech can be seen at a.o. NKV Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden, Ludlow 38, New York and "Made in Germany II", Sprengel Museum, Kestnergesellschaft and Kunstverein Hannover