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until 31.10. | #2874ARTatBerlin | EIGENHEIM Berlin shows from 3rd October 2020 the exhibition Werk und Fortsetzung by the artists Gabriele Stötzer and Paula Wehrmann. The exhibition is curated by Bianka Voigt and Konstantin Bayer, in cooperation with the GfZK (Gallery of Contemporary Art Leipzig) and takes place in the framework of the EMOP – European Month of Photograpy.
Gabriele Stötzer is one of the most impressive artists of our German-German present. Her multi-media, interdisciplinary working methods, including painting, photography, film, performance and fashion, photo books and above all writing, defied the oppressive power relations of the GDR dictatorship, rebelled against patriarchy and explored physical as well as collective conditions, thus testifying to an untiring process of questioning one’s own as well as society’s situation. On the occasion of the European Month of Photography (EMOP), EIGENHEIM Weimar/Berlin organised the exhibition Werk und Fortsetzung (Work and Continuation) together with the two artists Paula Gehrmann & Gabriele Stötzer. Paula Gehrmann developed already in 2019, based on her own artistic practice, a room installation for the exhibition, research and mediation project in three parts Conscious Incapacity – The Archive Gabriele Stötzer, in the GfzK Leipzig. Conscious Incapacity – The Gabriele Stötzer Archive was a walk-in archive that showed the artist’s artistic practice in the context of the GDR in the 1980s and invited visitors to actively engage with it.
The exhibition Werk & Fortsetzung now shows a selection of Stötzer’s photographic and filmic works from the 1980s and juxtaposes these new series of works based on the artistic practice of the time. During this year’s residency at the Cordts Art Foundation in Schwanenwerder, Stötzer reinterpreted the photo series Abwicklung from 1982, used her historical photographs as the basis for new overpaintings, and with the work Verbrecherfotos (Criminal Photographs), she began an extensive new work based on the pictorial aesthetics of portraits from Stasi files or police photographs. In addition, a large number of historical work groups have been compiled for the exhibition.
These current and historical groups of works enter into a dialogue with Paula Gehrmann’s artistic practice, which is determined by a photography of the present and spatial interventions between sculpture and functional display. The reduced aluminium-wood and glass constructions are used by the artist in the extended sense of an “assistance” in-situ and create their own artistic and accessible spaces. Gehrmann also conceives a very individual framing for the work and its continuation and deals with Stötzer’s individual groups of works, carrying, protecting and questioning them, allowing us to approach Stötzer’s works in a special way. Gehrmann’s photographic work also describes an immediacy. A direct insight into the private life and artistic practice of the artist is provided by her extensive and visually stunning, documentary photo diaries. An extract from her archive from 2019 to 2020 is shown. The photo diaries also record the visits made in preparation for the last exhibitions in Leipzig, thus creating a monument to the collaboration between the two artists.
This is particularly exciting because “for Gabriele Stötzer, photography has always been directly connected to her person and her life and has ultimately developed out of writing as if in a process of transformation, first with words and then with images: “I have consciously discovered photography as a means of expression for myself, [… In its results, photography is just as incorruptible as a literary text; as a photograph, it is an expression of bad, good, superficial, truth, ignorance, dilettantism,” the artist herself said in a conversation with the art and photo historian Franziska Schmidt 2019. Stötzer developed an idiosyncratic form of visual language that identifies photography as a conceptual art form. In the serial sequence of motifs, it follows the principles of contemporary art as a system of images and signs”. (quoted after Franziska Schmidt, Gabriele Stötzer, Ich-Körper, in: Camera Austria, No. 148, 2019, p.32-34)
The exhibition is part of the European Month of Photography Berlin 2020, was curated by Konstantin Bayer & Bianka Voigt and was created in cooperation with the GfZK, the Gallery of Contemporary Art Leipzig, and with the kind support of the Loock Gallery Berlin.
Gabriele Stötzer 1953 born in Emleben, 3 siblings, 1973 married to D. Kachold and studied German/Art at the Pädagogische Hochschule Erfurt, 1976 political exmatriculation from studies, 1977 one year political imprisonment in the women’s prison Hoheneck, afterwards clerk in a shoe factory, 1979 divorce, 1980 dismissal and takeover of the private gallery in the corridor, Erfurt; 1981 its liquidation by the State Security, 1981 start of performative photography in the GDR (with Cornelia Schleime), 1982 Super 8 films, publication in underground magazines of the Prenzlauer Berg scene, from 1984 fashion object shows, Super 8 films and performances with Erfurt artists’ group Exterra XX, 1989 co-founder of Women for Change, co-initiator of the first occupation of the GDR State Security in Erfurt on 4. 12.89, 1990 adoption of the girl’s name Stötzer, since 1990 publication of 8 books, from 2010 lecturer for performance block seminars at the University of Erfurt, 2011 and 2013 features for mdr about Hoheneck and forced adoption in the GDR, performances with EFIM Ensemble for intuitive music, 2013 Federal Cross of Merit.
Exhibitions (selection from 1996): bohemian and dictatorship in the ddr (2009), re.act. feminism (2013), Schwingungskurve Leben Klassik Stiftung Weimar (2013), Zwischen Ausstieg und Aktion Kunsthalle Erfurt (2016), Gegenbilder Gropius Bau Berlin (2018), Gerissene Fäden Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst Cottbus (2018), medea mucks on State Art Collections Dresden and Wendemuseum Los Angeles (2019) East german photography Fotofestival Arles (2019), Conscious Inability – The Archive Gabriele Stötzer Gallery of Contemporary Art Leipzig (2019-2020)
Paula Gehrmann (born 1982 in Berlin-Friedrichshain) after training as a photographer in Berlin, she graduated in fine arts at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, under Professor Joachim Brohm. The practice of the Leipzig artist Paula Gehrmann is based on photography, whose reality is mostly found in site-specific installations. By opening and describing spaces, working specifically in cooperations, and questioning common photographic documentation and representation are significant for her work. This performance demands an activation from the viewer and thus decisively shapes the work of Gehrmann, whose engagement provokes a co-authorship of the cultural and social situations and spaces with which the artist comes into contact.
Vernissage: Friday, 2 October 2020 from 7 pm
Artists’ evening: Saturday, 3 October 2020 from 7 pm
Reading Concert Germany from within, with texts by Gabriele Stötzer, music: Duo Klang-Zeichen (Daniel Hoffmann – trumpet/fluegelhorn; Michael von Hintzenstern – harmonium)
ONLINE Artist talk: Friday, 23 October 2020 at 7 pm – Gabriele Stötzer and Paula Gehrmann in conversation with Bianka Voigt (https://www.instagram.com/galerieeigenheim/ & https://www.facebook.com/galerieeigenheim/).
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 3 October to Saturday, 31 October 2020
To the Gallery
Gabriele Stötzer + Paula Gehrmann – EIGENHEIM Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibiitons Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
