Christiane Blattmann at Damien & The Love Guru

Artist: Christiane Blattmann

Exhibition title: La Chute Enchantee

Venue: Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels, Belgium

Date: September 2 – October 7, 2017

Photography: Kristien Daem, Ilse Raps, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Damien & The Love Guru

Then they laugh and fall backwards from force of laughing. All are infected. A noise rises like the rolling of drums under a vault. The bricks of the ceiling fall one by one, uncovering through the openings the gilded panelling of lofty rooms. The stones of the mosaics fly out, the glass panes clatter down, there are shafts of blue red orange mauve. The laughter does not lessen. The women pick up the bricks and using them as missiles they bombard the statues that remain standing in the midst of the disorder. They set about bringing down the remaining stones. They evacuate those among them who are injured. The systematic destruction of the building is carried through by the women in the midst of a storm of cries shouts, while the laughter continues, spreads, becomes general. It comes to an end only when nothing remains of the building but stones on stones. Then they lie down and fall asleep. .

(Monique Wittig – Les Guérillières)

Christiane Blattmann lives in Brussels and Hamburg. She received her MFA in Fine Arts at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, where she studied with Jutta Koether and Nick Mauss. A sculptural approach is the center around which her different forms of work unfold. Part of these practices also engage in creating platforms of exchange and discourse: in 2012 she started the publishing house Montez Press together with fellow artists and from 2011 till 2013 she was running the Betongalerie, and outdoor exhibition space in Hamburg with Jannis Marwitz. Christiane Blattmann has recently exhibited at Kunsthaus Hamburg, Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Croy Nielsen (Berlin), Oracle (Berlin), Mathew (New York, Berlin), Goethe Institut (Paris), Wilfried Lentz (Rotterdam), VI,VII (Oslo) and at the Biennial Regard Benin.

Christiane Blattmann, La Chute Enchantee, 2017, exhibition view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels

Christiane Blattmann, High Rise Boots, 2017, (ceramics, gesso, pigement), 62 x 100 x 75 cm

Christiane Blattmann, La Chute Enchantee, 2017, exhibition view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels

Christiane Blattmann, Untitled (bag) 4, 2017, (latex, pigement, resin), 86 x 39 cm

Christiane Blattmann, Untitled, 2017, (silicone, pigement, cotton gauze), 48 x 24 cm

Christiane Blattmann, You Compare Yourselves Privately to the Fruits, but You Are Fruits Only in Appearance, 2017, (silicone, pigment jute), 165 x 125 cm

Christiane Blattmann, Forever Tickled, 2017, (silicone, pigment, cotton gauze), 207 x 120 cm

Christiane Blattmann, La Chute Enchantee, 2017, exhibition view, Damien & The Love Guru, Brussels

Christiane Blattmann, Untitled (bag) 1, 2017, (latex, pigement, resin), 144 x 60 cm

Christiane Blattmann, Untitled (bag) 2, 2017, (latex, pigement, resin), 97 x 40 cm

Christiane Blattmann, Untitled, 2017, (latex, pigment), 47 x 14 cm

Christiane Blattmann, Then, Addressing Themselves to the Walls, They Ask Which of Them Possesses the Greatest Strength, 2017, (silicone, pigement, jute), 280 x 50 cm