Inner Landscapes
Inner Landscapes
May 21 - June 18, 2017
Curated by Betty Böhm
Artists: Barbara Breitenfellner, Damien Cadio,
Selket Chlupka and Betty Böhm
The artists Barbara Breitenfellner, Damien Cadio, Selket Chlupka and Betty Böhm came together to engage in the collaborative process "Inner Landscapes". Though working with different media and diverse practices ranging from collage, video and photography to drawing and painting, there is a powerful streak in each of the four approaches which unifies them - the subconscious meeting the conceptual. In our technology driven and utterly outward oriented world there is a perceptible and growing need for reverting to one’s intrinsic sub- and unconscious wisdom, for valuing intuition as a strong, today mostly neglected means of dissecting truth and new perspectives. Utilizing the powers of the unconscious and at the same time channeling it through a sensitive concept, the artists bring about works that can be absorbed in a most comprehensive way - cognitively as well as sensorially and emotionally. In order to not simply exhibit existing works but to truly connect the artists and link their individual approaches, they engaged in a collective process inspired from the surrealistic technique Cadavre Exquis. Within four parallelly started working series, each artist had to tie in with the predecessor’s work without being aware of the whole picture, thus having to draw from their intuitive notions, building their own assumptions and associations. What ultimately happened was unforeseeable by nature yet exactly what the initial concept was aiming for: a „magical“ process of interweaving underlying themes, the construction and deconstruction of hidden ideas, the autonomous continuation of a statement as well as the intuitive dereferencing to previous depictions. The created works are spanning a broad range of motifs - the artificial and miraculous nested in vague nature, glamorous chimeras being deconstructed into dark erotica and its abstract depiction, orphaned swimming pools lingering in the aftermath of the real estate crisis whereas a contemplative lakeside via the detour of an ancient statue transforms into an ever-spinning loop of a refugee’s ocean crossing. Thus timeless archetypal motifs are uniting seamlessly with contemporary issues while all of the artists respectively find their unique approach of staging these with ingenuity, accuracy and yet playfulness and whimsical humor alike. Within and between all of the four work cycles one can find various thematic reverberations, numerous resonating details in form and content and further some kind of ‘mystical‘ agreement on the handling of color and its absence.
Address: Kunstraum LLC, 20 Grand Ave, Space 509, Brooklyn, NY 11205 Hrs: Thu - Sat 12-6 PM by appointment only – please contact us first! Contact: Nadja Verena Marcin, 646.924.9656, nadja@kunstraumllc.com Social Media: www.facebook.com/kunstraumllc
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Image: Barbara Breitenfellner, "WVZ 452", 2016