↳ Exhibitions

Surface to Space at Kebbel-Villa

October 12, 2022

Artists: Frauke Dannert, Monique S. Desto, Karina Kueffner, Christine Sabel, Astrid Schröder

Exhibition title: Surface to Space

Curated by: Jürgen Dehm

Venue: Kebbel-Villa, Schwandorf, Germany

Date: August 28 – October 9, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Kebbel-Villa, Schwandorf

Which artistic strategies can be used to correlate surface and space? How can painting, in particular, suggest spatiality beyond perspective representation? And how can a painted work enter a dialogue with the (surrounding) space and its specific characteristics? Five contemporary female artists of different generations present their individual answers to these questions in the current exhibition at the Kebbel-Villa on two exhibition levels.

Utilizing the entire area of 160 m² of the ground floor, Frauke Dannert makes it possible to experience the exhibition space with its architectural characteristics and lighting conditions in a new way – through a specifically created, immersive spatial installation that consists of carpet inlays and wall paintings. Dannert’s expansive works can be understood as a consistent continuation of her collage practice, for which the artist dissects books on the history of architecture and subsequently recombines the resulting set pieces with photocopier, scissors, and glue stick.

On the first floor, Monique S. Desto uses the office of the artistic director of the Kebbel-Villa as an extended picture plane for her ‘Gebanne’. The pigmented latex sheet with a length of 80 m meanders along the walls, seizes furniture, displays its matt reverse side, only to switch back to the luminous front the next moment. The deformations left by the structures of the office space allow the painterly compositions of the latex to jump from the surface into three-dimensionality. In Karina Kueffner’s work, woven strips of decor-foil blend into the empty area between the two entrances to the exhibition space. Another of the artist’s works features loops of polyester strips that push from the surface of the painted canvas into the space. In contrast, Christine Sabel’s glass stela and her printed wall objects are designed to play a cunning game with perception. Every movement and every change of perspective lead to new optical effects. In the adjacent room, Astrid Schröder continues to play with illusionism: through seriality and repetition, the artist successfully evokes spatiality on the flat picture plane of her acrylic paintings.