The Buchmann Galerie opens its second exhibition space in Berlin tomorrow, the Buchmann Box, with new photographic works by the Berlin-based German artist Bettina Pousttchi.
The four large-format photographs in this exhibition (180 cm x 225 cm each) are the first works to have been produced during the artist's residency at the University of the Arts in London. Taken on the streets of London, the motifs have an indexical ambiguity that is typical of the artist's approach to photography. The atmospheric blurriness is heightened by the horizontal stripes added by digital editing. The semantic charge of this cinematographic sequences produces a condensed space of association that recalls mnemonic images.
Even the exhibition's title, 'Tomorrow Was Yesterday', makes it clear that the artist's concern in these works is the relativity of the perception of time, particularly in relation to the photographic and cinematic image. Yet these "time images" also have a poetic dimension where the levels of the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary seem to overlap.
For some time now, the artist has been working with the interim space between the moving and the still image. In her photo series and videos, she blurs the boundaries between cinematic experience and the photographic moment. The points of intersection between media, form, and content interest the artist in terms of the way they formulate the question of the representation and relativity of the visible and thus undermine established orders of the gaze. It raises the questions what "reality" is, how it can be depicted, and how we perceive it.
An extensive survey of the artist's work was recently on view in the Von der Heydt Museum / Kunsthalle Barmen in Wuppertal. In July the Museum on the Seam will exhibit a large selection from the Parachutes series of photographs in the exhibition Heartquake. The artist will also participate in this year's Rohkunstbau exhibition in Potsdam, which will be held from July to October in the Villa Kellermann and whose theme is "Three Colors: Red, Fraternity."
Bettina Pousttchi
2 May - 21 June
BUCHMANN BOX
CHARLOTTENSTRASSE 75
10117 BERLIN
T 49 (0)30 258 999 29
www.buchmanngalerie.com
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