until 12.12. | #0267ARTatBerlin | FACTS AND FABRICATIONS at the Petra Rietz Salon Galerie (14. November to 12. December 2015) is the first joined exhibition of Paula Muhr and Hans Könings.
Facts turn into artifacts. History tells itself in personal stories. Stories that reinterpret these very facts as symbolic constructs. It is this approach that forms the common ground between these two very different artistic personalities.
Paula Muhr is concerned with the historical and contemporary role of photography as an instrument of reality production and investigates socio-cultural mechanisms of the construction of identity and normality. In her installations of staged photography, found footage and filmic montages of images, texts and sounds, analytical research methods are employed.
In his impressive graphic series, Hans Könings reflects both his own and other people’s myths and memories. His photographic models are taken from the media, found at flea markets or come from his own biographical fund. Könings gets to the bottom of the secret of the pictures and stories by removing them from their original contexts and translating them into linoleum and wood prints.
If one takes a closer look at the respective artistic oeuvre, one gets to the bottom of the matter, this joint exhibition reveals a context that moves towards each other in individual expression. Fragments of different sizes and materials are translated into haptic, sometimes very fragile objects, fleeting inscriptions, new image constructions and temporary light projections. A constellation that negates the passage of time by juxtaposing incompatible layers of temporality. And yet, an installation that celebrates time by placing words and objects in a new imaginary cycle of movement. The viewer is invited to a dialogue, to a reinterpretation. An invitation based on the conviction that any invention, any (re)conceived meaning, regardless of its real references, is always essential and temporal. A process that directly reflects memory. Remembering is multimedia: it happens through pictorial elements, scenes that run like a film, sounds and timbres, often also smells and above all feelings.
Paula Muhr (*1977 Serbia) studied photography and comparative literature in Belgrade, Serbia, and graduated as a master student at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. She is a doctoral student at the Institute of Art and Image History at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the Fotogalerie Wien, the Kunsthalle der Sparkasse Leipzig, the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes in Tenerife, the Museum auf Abruf in Vienna, the GRASSI Museum in Leipzig, the Centre national de l’audiovisuel Luxemburg, the Trieste Contemporanea, the Musée d’Art Moderne in Liege and the Shenzhen Fine Arts Institute in China. Paula Muhr lives in Berlin since 2009
Hans Könings (*1950 Den Haag, NL) studied painting and printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts Sint-Joost in Breda and at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. He was professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, guest professor at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf and the Academy of Fine Arts in New Delhi. His works have been shown internationally in many solo and group exhibitions and are represented in the collections of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. Hans Könings has lived in Berlin since 2007.
Vernissage: Saturday, 14 November 2015, 4 – 8 pm
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 14 November 2015 to Saturday, 12 December 2015
[maxbutton id=”100″]
Image caption: Paula Muhr via Petra Rietz Salon Galerie
Facts + Fabrications – Petra Rietz Salon Galerie – Kunst in Berlin ART at Berlin