12 Jun 2012

Susanne Kriemann and Fernando Sánchez Castillo at Kunstverein Braunschweig

Haus Salve Hospes
SUSANNE KRIEMANN
COLD TIME

June 16 - August 26, 2012
Opening and Summer Party: June 15, 7 pm

In her photographic projects, like a researcher Susanne Kriemann tracks down forgotten historical events and documents and uses them for her multilayered associative framework. The stories that come about are based on historical, cultural, and biographical facts and do not distinguish between public and private past: Kriemann uses both her own as well as found photographic material for her works, interweaving the photographs to develop a dialogical mise en scène.

A silent crazy jungle under glass addresses the recording and preserving of a moment as this is done in archives. In the exhibition Cold Time in Braunschweig, Kriemann expands the work and deals in particular with the 'frozen moment.' Her point of departure was the Berlin Airlift (1948/49), which at the same time marks the beginning of the Cold War. In reference to the air corridor at the time between the FRG and the GDR, Kriemann took photographs from a helicopter of what is in large part very dense woodland. These aerial photographs are supplemented by archive photographs taken by the American aeronautic historian John Provan, who possesses 175,000 digitalized negatives from the Cold War era. Kriemann joins her own photographs with archival material to scrutinize the authenticity of archives.

In Ashes and broken brickwork of a logical theory, a line of communication also develops between Kriemann's images and existing material by, among others, Agatha Christie. From the 1930s to the 1950s, the famous crime writer accompanied her husband to archeological excavations in Mesopotamia as a photographer. Following in her footsteps, Kriemann traveled to several places in Syria and North Iraq to take her own pictures. She poses questions with respect to the preservation of history as well as of political topography.

Susanne Kriemann (*1972 in Erlangen, lives in Berlin and Rotterdam) studied at the Kunstakademie Stuttgart and at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. She has participated in numerous international group exhibitions, such as the 5th Berlin Biennale (2008). Comprehensive solo exhibitions of her work have been mounted by the Stedelijk Museum Bureau in Amsterdam (2009), the Berlinische Galerie (2010), as well as the Kunsthalle Winterthur (2011).


Remise
FERNANDO SÁNCHEZ CASTILLO
GUERNICA SYNDROME

June 16 - August 26, 2012
Opening and Summer Party: June 15, 7 pm

The artist Fernando Sánchez Castillo (*1970 in Madrid) examines the efficacy of history and historicity in films, sculptures, and performances. He scrutinizes the propagandistic mechanisms of memorials as well as of political myths, revealing their workings by means of in part satirical interventions. In the process, the artist often uses concrete traces from the past as a point of departure and as the material for his analyses and transformations.

In his most recent work, Guernica Syndrome (2012), Sánchez Castillo deals with a virtually forgotten yet extremely charged relic of recent Spanish history: Azor, former dictator Francisco Franco's pleasure yacht, on board which important political discussions took place. In 1948, for example, he met here several times with Juan de Borbón, Spain's heir to the throne. After Franco's death in 1975, the yacht passed into the possession of the state, which in turn sold it for a small price in order to rid itself of this fascist symbol. A private citizen recently attempted to market the boat as an attraction, to establish it as an event location and political Mecca, yet his enterprise was unsuccessful. Fernando Sánchez Castillo bought the Azor in 2011 and had it dismantled to create a rusty brown, multipart sculpture consisting of more than forty blocks of metal. In this way, Franco's historically and emotionally charged yacht makes formal reference to Minimal Art and its pursuit of logic and objectivity. At the same time, Guernica Syndrome inquires into the strategies of dealing with the past as well as of the suppression and glorification of history.

Fernando Sánchez Castillo is one of the most well known contemporary Spanish artists. Early this year, the Matadero Madrid presented a solo exhibition of his work, where Guernica Syndrome prompted a broad public discussion. He has furthermore participated in numerous international group exhibitions, for example at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels, the MARTa Herford, and the O.K. Centrum für Gegenwartskunst in Linz.