Artist: Christiane Blattmann
Exhibition title: Un-Break My Walls
Curated by: Merle Radtke
Venue: Kunsthalle Münster, Münster, Germany
Date: April 16 – July 21, 2019
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist, Kunsthalle Münster and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels
With the show Un-Break My Walls, the Kunsthalle Münster is pleased to present Christiane Blattmann’s first institutional solo exhibition. In her works the artist experiments with a variety of shaping methods, whereby the interaction of the materials used as well as theoretical and literary references serve as important points of departure. Blattmann interweaves, intermeshes, combines, compounds, merges and processes; she creates tangled combinations of materials, structures, things, stories and characters. Her exhibition in Münster is based on three series of works from the past years, extended and supplemented for the Kunsthalle, alongside new works developed specifically for the show and conceived to blend with the premises of the former grain warehouse. In their very diverse, at times contrasting texture, Blattmann’s works impress through their strong material presence; they bear witness to a particular concern with the choice of materials and their specific qualities – including ceramics, jute, gauze, rattan, glass, plaster, silicone and various metals – and are marked by a tactile sensibility that challenges the “haptic viewing” of its observers. Blattmann plays off the material qualities against each other, joining them despite their difference. She employs the principal sculptural means of weight, proportion, gravity and space in a highly skilled manner. At the same time, she sounds out the essential characteristics of the genre sculpture by working on the verge to other genres. Her hybrid objects shift between an “as well as” and a “neither nor”. Eluding all normative definition, it is dissolution that appears to be an underlying aesthetic strategy. In her works the artist revitalizes lifeless materials. The language of the material enters into a dialogue. The way she plays with opposing qualities – organic versus inorganic, anthropomorphic versus geometric, calculated versus incidental – creates a tension that is characteristic for Christiane Blattmann’s artistic oeuvre and turns her works into distinct figures of thought.
Christiane Blattmann (born in Stuttgart in 1983, lives and works in Hamburg and Brussels) initially studied at the Berlin University of the Arts before transferring to the University of
Fine Arts Hamburg in 2006, where she then graduated in 2013. Between 2011 and 2013, together with Jannis Marwitz, she ran the Betongalerie, an exhibition venue in public space in Hamburg St. Pauli. Since 2012 she has been part of the publishers’ team of Montez Press, which she had founded the same year together with Than Hussein Clark, Anja Dietmann, William Joys and James Connick. In 2012 she also went to Mexico City with a scholarship from Neue Kunst in Hamburg e.V., and in 2018 she was a scholar at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Her works have been shown internationally, among others at The Community (Paris), at the Kunsthaus Hamburg, at Damien & The Love Guru (Brussels), at the art association Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof (Hamburg), at Croy Nielsen (Berlin), the Mathew Gallery (New York/Berlin), the Goethe Institut Paris, VI,VII (Oslo), at Marwan (Amsterdam), the Biennale Regard Benin (Cotonou) and at the NEK – Neuer Essener Kunstverein.
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, They Have Broken with the Tradition of Inside and Outside, 2019, Rattan, steel, silicone, pigment. Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, They Have Broken with the Tradition of Inside and Outside, 2019 (Detail), Rattan, steel, silicone, pigment. Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels, Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Die Alte Braut, 2019, Silicone, pigment, jute, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Die Alte Braut, 2019 (Detail), Silicone, pigment, jute, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Entwaffnung II, 2018, Silicone, pigment, cheesecloth, Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, EVR AFTR #3, 2019, Jute, steel, glass, bronze, silicone, pigment, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, EVR AFTR #3, 2019 (Detail), Jute, steel, glass, bronze, silicone, pigment, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, EVR AFTR #3, 2019 (Detail), Jute, steel, glass, bronze, silicone, pigment, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, EVR AFTR #2, 2019, Jute, steel, bronze, silicone, pigment, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, EVR AFTR #2, 2019, Jute, steel, bronze, silicone, pigment, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, EVR AFTR #2, 2019 (Detail), Jute, steel, bronze, silicone, pigment, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, EVR AFTR, 2019, Stove, dyed jute, glass, bronze, steel, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, EVR AFTR, 2019 (Detail), Stove, dyed jute, glass, bronze, steel, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Collection Svenja & Mark Lüdemann. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, You Readjust the Two Halves of Your Body, 2019, Silicone, pigment, cotton gauze, Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Rattan, steel, silicone, pigment, Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Augurs, 2019 (Detail), Rattan, steel, silicone, pigment, Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, 6-Senses, 2017–2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels (1–4). Collection Svenja & Mark Lüdemann (5), Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Touch, 2018, Silicone, pigment, jute, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Venus Wringing Her Hair, Standing at the Water’s Edge, 2019, Silicone, pigment, jute, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Venus Wringing Her Hair, Standing at the Water’s Edge, 2019, Silicone, pigment, jute, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, They Say That in the First Place the Vocabulary of Every Language Is to Be Examined, Modified, Turned Upside Down, That Every Word Must Be Screened, 2018, Silicone, pigment, jute, Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Touch, 2018, Silicone, pigment, jute, Courtesy the artist. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Hear, 2018, Silicone, pigment, jute, Collection Svenja & Mark Lüdemann. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Vulpis haizt ain fuhs, 2019, Rattan, silicone, pigment, Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Poto: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Private Collection, Berlin & Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Un-Break My Walls, 2019 (Installation view Kunsthalle Münster), Courtesy the artist and Oracle, Berlin & Private Collection, Berlin & Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Throwing Her Head Around, 2015, Latex, pigment, Courtesy the artist and Oracle, Berlin. Photo: Volker Renner
Christiane Blattmann, Post Equinox, 2019, Rattan, silicone, pigment, Courtesy the artist and Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels. Photo: Volker Renner