Susanne M. Winterling
13 Aug - 07 Sep 2007
SUSANNE M. WINTERLING
"I’ll be your mirror, but I’ll dissolve"
“Winterling seems to be focused on the fragmentary, and, more precisely, on the single frame as it, being the smallest filmic unit, contains a complete world in itself while remaining indivisible. The result is a kind of beating of wings, in which our own eyes become an integral part...”
Josef Strau
Daniel Reich Gallery is very pleased to present “I’ll be your mirror, but I’ll dissolve,” a debut exhibition of work by film and video artist Susanne Winterling.
Winterling’s work gives the viewer the material for constructing a portrait, an imagined identity distilled and manifested through specific images and references presented devoid of hierarchy or chronology. Though this identity remains elusive, the audience is able to form a multitude of hypotheses but with no affirmation of a knowable conclusion.
What the artist describes as “an impossible auto-biography” generates the “modes of transport for the narratives and their sensibilities.” Hence, the viewer experiences a malleable landscape. This effect circumvents both film and photography’s documentary aspect. The image remains temporal and the subject elusive as the work negotiates this nostalgic and esoteric terrain.
“Le Sens Practique”, a video piece, observes two women performing a mundanely choreographed transposition. A raincoat is exchanged repeatedly. One woman removes the garment from herself to dress up the other woman; a moment later the other woman reciprocates the action. As the activity continues the nature of each character is constantly reassessed. As the gesture repeats, the persona of each character alters as though reflecting the continuing change in costume. Through isolation the mannerism of each character is amplified, one of few signifiers in the relationship between these two women. Yet this continual, ceremonial, almost monotonous exchange between the two characters, to the point of absurdity, calls to mind the “sucking stone” sequence of Beckett’s Molloy, while highlighting the futility of the action.
The elusive nature of Winterling’s work involves an ambiguity which contributes to the subject itself pointing to both the specific autobiographies of the women she depicts (fragments of Winterling’s composite sensibility) and to the experience of an audience intuitively absorbing a subject in terms of their own subjective frame of references. In this way, Winterling’s work subtly blends method and content making minute yet infinitely reflecting connections.
In 2006-2007, Winterling participated in “Eve’s Arc and the Feminist” at Gavin Brown1s Enterprise Passerby, a solo exhibition Moscow Center of the Arts/Moscow House of Photography; she was included in group exhibitions at the Kunstverein Hamburg and Kunsthalle Basel. She was also featured by Josef Strau at Vilma Gold, London. Previously, Winterling participated in exhibitions at the Swiss Institute, NY and Kunstverein Stuttgart. Winterling lives and works in Berlin. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany.
"I’ll be your mirror, but I’ll dissolve"
“Winterling seems to be focused on the fragmentary, and, more precisely, on the single frame as it, being the smallest filmic unit, contains a complete world in itself while remaining indivisible. The result is a kind of beating of wings, in which our own eyes become an integral part...”
Josef Strau
Daniel Reich Gallery is very pleased to present “I’ll be your mirror, but I’ll dissolve,” a debut exhibition of work by film and video artist Susanne Winterling.
Winterling’s work gives the viewer the material for constructing a portrait, an imagined identity distilled and manifested through specific images and references presented devoid of hierarchy or chronology. Though this identity remains elusive, the audience is able to form a multitude of hypotheses but with no affirmation of a knowable conclusion.
What the artist describes as “an impossible auto-biography” generates the “modes of transport for the narratives and their sensibilities.” Hence, the viewer experiences a malleable landscape. This effect circumvents both film and photography’s documentary aspect. The image remains temporal and the subject elusive as the work negotiates this nostalgic and esoteric terrain.
“Le Sens Practique”, a video piece, observes two women performing a mundanely choreographed transposition. A raincoat is exchanged repeatedly. One woman removes the garment from herself to dress up the other woman; a moment later the other woman reciprocates the action. As the activity continues the nature of each character is constantly reassessed. As the gesture repeats, the persona of each character alters as though reflecting the continuing change in costume. Through isolation the mannerism of each character is amplified, one of few signifiers in the relationship between these two women. Yet this continual, ceremonial, almost monotonous exchange between the two characters, to the point of absurdity, calls to mind the “sucking stone” sequence of Beckett’s Molloy, while highlighting the futility of the action.
The elusive nature of Winterling’s work involves an ambiguity which contributes to the subject itself pointing to both the specific autobiographies of the women she depicts (fragments of Winterling’s composite sensibility) and to the experience of an audience intuitively absorbing a subject in terms of their own subjective frame of references. In this way, Winterling’s work subtly blends method and content making minute yet infinitely reflecting connections.
In 2006-2007, Winterling participated in “Eve’s Arc and the Feminist” at Gavin Brown1s Enterprise Passerby, a solo exhibition Moscow Center of the Arts/Moscow House of Photography; she was included in group exhibitions at the Kunstverein Hamburg and Kunsthalle Basel. She was also featured by Josef Strau at Vilma Gold, London. Previously, Winterling participated in exhibitions at the Swiss Institute, NY and Kunstverein Stuttgart. Winterling lives and works in Berlin. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany.