RUTH HOMMELSHEIM | Dreamland

Opening: Friday, 20.03.2015, 7 p.m.

Exhibition: 21.03.–18.04.2015

Lecture Performance: Thursday, 16.04.2015, 7 p.m.

Christopher Dell | Monodosis

In her exhibition Dreamland Ruth Hommelsheim presents an installation composed of painted-over photographs and an expansive wall drawing. Here strategies and elements from previous projects come to bear and are continued and united within an inclusive exhibition concept. 

The basic material for this structurally poly-layered work is provided by photographs - taken by the artist on her travels - of architectural objects of various origins. The next step towards the finished work then is to cover their backgrounds with white acrylic paint, thereby releasing the objects. The paint remains somewhat transparent, leaving the urban space surrounding the central image objects detectable. Nonetheless the painting-over of context creates uncertainty – the respective structure now appears as if dropped out of time and space.

The title Dreamland is derived from one of the image objects, an electric sign on a run-down entertainment palace on the British coast. Beyond that, the title Dreamland tells of the released objects’ detached condition.

The small-sized pictures dealing each with architecture are complemented by two large format pictures of singular figures taken from the artist’s family archive. As with the buildings, the figures, too, are released and emphasized by painting over their backdrops. 

An additional plane of the installation is made up of pencil drawings on the gallery’s walls, the result of a graphic appropriation and combination of traces of previous shows. Pencil lines connect nail holes in, and blemishes and stains on the gallery walls to form an abstract map, a network, or grid. The released buildings and persons are thereupon placed, and thus introduced into a new context.

In Dreamland Ruth Hommelsheim expands previous working methods: elements from different work sequences are dissolved out of their project-oriented context, combined and connected with installative elements to arrive at an site-specific installation that is to be seen as a work of its own.