Stephanie Dost on Artmap.com

CHRISTIAN EHRENTRAUT ÜBER EINZELAUSSTELLUNG VON DOST IN BERLIN

Maedchen Katze Wald

The ink drawings in Stephanie Dost’s installations are re-interpretations of already existing, some popular, some completely unknown portraits of women, lovers and bearded men. Dramatically illuminated in strong light-dark contrast, the small to oversized works are grouped together and installed directly onto the gallery walls.

Over the years, Dost has amassed a giant image archive from books, movies, magazines and the Internet. Motifs from contemporary pop culture and medieval religious art serve as models for her drawings as well as scenes from Western movies and soft porn. Dost makes these images her own and emphasizes the iconic and the theatrical, providing the people portrayed with an aura of silent film stars. At the same time, she makes any historical origin almost unrecognizable and transfers her protagonists to the present.
Resembling an analogue Tumblr-blog, where images, texts and links from different sources can be published in one’s own blog with just a mouse click, Dost’s appropriated artefacts are combined to a new global image in a visual stream of consciousness and ultimately, to a portrait of the artist herself.

Stephanie Dost was born in Rochlitz in 1980. She attended the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts, studying from 2000 to 2006 under Prof. Arno Rink and Prof. Neo Rauch. This is her third solo exhibition at the gallery. Dost lives and works in Leipzig.

Christian Ehrentraut, 2012