damenwahl! / ladies' choice!
gute aussichten_young german photography

January 15 - Februar 21, 2010

Participating artists:

Catrin Altenbrandt (Frankfurt/Main)
Claudia Christoffel (Bremen)
Annette Grotkamp (Hamburg)
Bianca Gutberlet (Parisand Normandy)
Irina Jansen (Bad Driburg)
Delia Keller (Berlin)
Angela Kovács (Berlin)
Tamara Lorenz (Cologne)
Agata Madejska (London)
Kathi Schröder (Berlin)


opening, Friday, January 15

Already for the second time the project "gute aussichten_young german photography" guests at the Kuenstlerhaus Dortmund. Being founded as an initiative to support young photographer talents the project is touring succesfully throughout the globe since 2004.
In contrast to 2006 exclusively lady photographers are presented at the location at Sunderweg 1. The female winners of the last four years' competitions wil show their recent works. (www.guteaussichten.org)   
 
        
           
Catrin Altenbrandt, * 1978, lives and works in Frankfurt/Main
The artist is showing works from her series "Oceanworld", "a zone of eternal happiness and everlasting youth" (Heiner Blum).
(winner of the competition 2007/2008)



OCEANWORLD, 2001 - 2008
         
          
Claudia Christoffel, * 1971, lives and works in Bremen
In her work "temporary sculptural settings" (2007) Christoffel is further developping a series initiated during her Erasmus stipend 2003 in Reykjavik and her corresponding studies with Roni Horn. Little paper pins purchased as promotion offer were the catalyst for an open series in the framework of which Claudia Christioffel is setting these pins at locations and objects that are related to stations of her artistic work. She uses every day's items to realize her artistic interventions. In the case of the pins these interventions are temporary and fugitive - nothing more than a trace that, at its original site, is often left invisible for the broad public. Only by photographing it its existence is testified. Since 2006 she has extended these setting to incorporate the offices of several curators and directors. The moment of the spontaneous action, the creation of a sculptural aspect, its photographic documentation and finally the destruction by the artist herself are blended to create a genre-crossing work.
(winner of the competition 2005/2006)          


Temporäre skulpturale Setzungen, 2007
     

Annette Grotkamp, *1975, lives and works in Hamburg
In the series "without title" the artist is entering the mystic and romantically embellished world of the seas. Even in times when there are hardly any native natural ranges left and the seas have become economic spaces whose resources are exploited more and more ruthlessly, the seas are still associated with notions of freedom and adventure. The photographies of Annette Grotkamp's series "without title" stem from coasts, auquaria and museums for natural history, thereby entering partly real and partily artificially created spaces. Yet these eternal parameters are blurred beyond recognition in her works. It is not the actual origin hat is of relevance but the emotional impression that has been created by light conditions and perspective. Her photographs breath a n atmosphere of almost pictoral quality thereby widely blurring the boundaries between real and imaginary worlds (of longing).
(winner of the competition 2007/2008)


Ohne Titel, 2007 - 08


Bianca Gutberlet, *1973, lives and works in Paris and the Normandy
In her series "Tausendschoen", Bianca Gutberlet reveals the dark sides of a European metropole that is deserted in the months July and August by all those inhabitants who can afford it. For the average number of 10000 homeless people this means that most public spaces and institutions as showers, WC and soup kitchens will be shut down during this period. In a city that welcomes millions of tourists each year, the prices for rents and real estate have climbed to astronomical heights, with the effect that homelessness is no longer a fate of the socially weak and poor alone. In the shadow of a glamourous city with world famous cultural monuments more and more 'normal' citzens live under poverty level and become homeless while about 130 000 appartments are unoccupied.
(winner of the competition 2004/2005)


Tausendschön, 2005 - 08


Vanessa Jack, *1972, lives and works in Cologne
In her contribution for the exhibition the artist is taking the line which she already chose for her diploma work "Projektion/Projection": By varying techniques of montage and collage she cuts and fragments the homogenous immage plane. In her handcrafted works she combines and interweaves multidimensional views to create a two dimensional photographic space. The views of streets and architecture of Vanessa Jack are puzzles of simultaneous image and action levels that make it difficult for the observer to position him/herself. The side by side of different perspective are cerating not only diverging image but also time axes. She thus literally cuts to pieces our capability of generating a three dimensional bild from two dimensional sensoral perception combined with the almost instantaneous mesurement of the distance between eye and object.
(winner of the competition 2006/2007)


Ohne Titel, 2006 - 07


Irina Jansen, *1979, lives and works near Bielefeld
Already in her work "Bild_Raum" (2006) Irina Jansen was operating at the boundary between the reproduction of reality and the creation of fictious space imagery. In "Surrgate" she develops this technique one step further by creating digitally composed scenarios from real textures and surfaces. What looks like authentic images of architecture at first sight turns out to be simulated compositions, in which the boundaries between real and virtual spaces are blurred beyond recognition. The visualization of the world by means of digital computed operations has already become reality in many cultural aspects - the effects of the modified ways of creating and percepting images on the socialization and aculturalization of upcoming generations are however still unpredictable.
(winner of the competition 2006/2007)


Surrogate, 2008
 
          
Delia Keller, *1977, lives and works in Berlin
Delia Keller, winner of the competition 2005/2006 chose a strangely sounding street name with number as title for her work thereby leading us abruptly to a specific building which in spite of its persistent uneventfulness is revealed as the actual spot of action. Rooms, corridors, stairs, windows and doors seem frozen in their presence which is worn due to permanent use and lack of renovation. The physical state of a building mirrors a society in transit between subdued socialistic dictatorship and the hope of overall wealth in a captalistic oriented system. The inside becomes manifest in the outside. Old as well as new utopias shine through as a promise hidden behind mathematical formula and promising internet addresses. The dreams of a modern society which is levelling all individual differences, wishes and goals in favor of one single great idea is literally extending into the present time and foreshadowing a possible failure. Thus a state of stagnation that seems to penetrate even the last corner of the building is lurking behind the objective presentation of the photographer.


aus der Serie "B-Dul Carol 1, nr. 19",  2007 - 08

     
Angela Kovács, *1978, lebt und arbeitet in Berlin
In her series "Wo muss ich noch mal hin?/Where do I actually have to go?" Angela Kovács, winner of the competion 2004/2005, is leading the observer into a puzzling world of self-promotion. In a scenogrphic image space, where eventually the senseless Waiting for Godot is reminiscent, a serial of dark mental and emotional states are displayed, reporting of being thrown back onto oneself. The young photographer is celebrating her own speech- and motionlessness. Frozen in sharp contrasts of black and white a well-balanced tension is spanning the narrative spaces, an effect also persued in the sparse arrangements of the works of "Black Stills".


Black Stills, 2008


Tamara Lorenz, * 1972, lives and works in Cologne
About "Hoehere Maechte/Higher Forces":
The Higher Forces are of importance:
they are of relevance and they show it.
Behind the illusoriness of black and white it appears that the things are composed in a new way:
80 L waste bag, dark card board, black wood battens.
The Higer Forces are great pretenders.
The presence of their power is very fragile and the drape of illusion quite transparent.
Lucky us, we can decide ourselves how to perceive the power.
About her movie "Deterritorialisierung/ De-territorialization":
The search for cognition follows different paths.
Concordance, congruence are a goal.
Subversively elementary forces are playing their game.
Do we have a choice?
(winner of the competition 2004/2005)    


Höhere Mächte, 2007


Agata Madejska, *1979,lives and works in Duesseldorf und London
In her series "alpha" the artist shows photographic notes of details that have transmuted to become an image themselves. Images of thoughts - often without recognizable correlation, sense or reference - are left over from the streams of our experiences. Quoted by photography they are removed from their point of origin to be transformed into something new. In some sense they become independent, start a life on their own and generate a different perception. They are thus assigning a new order to observations and newly reflect experienced events.
(winner of the competition 2007/2008)


Alpha, 2006 


Kathi Schroeder, *1978, lives and works in Berlin
In her images the artist is engaged with the subject of dissolution and deconstruction. Her work is a screen for deep lying mental and emotional states. As there is neither a unique truth nor a unique reality but rather innumerous interweavments of subjective and objective factors and the related, superimposed and entangled spaces of perception, destruction and fragmentation are their visualization. Kathi Schroder is cutting her image copies to pieces to rearrange them in a new manner, thereby creating a materialized cross-over from a homogenous shape into a heterogenous plane - deconstruction is the artist's instrument of analysis and (self-)questioning, the destruction of the material creates the physical and mental conditions for a restart. She is thus acting as a "thought weaver" whose twists and turns we are invited to follow by observing her works.
(winner of the competition 2005/2006)


Today - Fragmente, 2008


images invitation card ©: the artists
images website ©: the artists
Project initiated by: Josefine Raab and Stefan Becht
Organizers for the Kuenstlerhaus: Reinhild Kuhn and Peter Schmieder
images opening ©: Jens Sundheim
kindly supported by: Sparkasse Dortmund, Cultural Department of the City of Dortmund