21 Mar 2014

'Third Spaces' at Motorenhalle. Project Centre Dresden

THIRD SPACES Judith Karcheter – Evgenija Wassilew – Bignia Wehrli

The Berlin artists Judith Karcheter (*1974 Rotenburg/Wümme), Evgenija Wassilew (*1978 Hamburg) und Bignia Wehrli (*1979 Uster, Schweiz) address issues like how to visualize artistic processes in space using video, text, collage or photography in a fragmentary manner. How can physical or biological phenomena, poetically motivated memories, time, speed or covered distances be transformed into artistic display formats, which play with various indicators of space?

Upon entering the Motorenhalle. Project Centre Dresden, one is instantly struck by the open, three-aisled architectural design of the former factory hall, partitioned as a church, with vertical and horizontal iron supports and trusses structuring the interior. One surveys the various work groups by the three chosen artists – Judith Karcheter (*1974, Rotenburg/Wümme), Evgenija Wassilew (*1978, Hamburg) and Bignia Wehrli (*1979, Uster, Switzerland) – spread over the space from the entrance to the wall marking the central nave. From this initial overview, the works open themselves up to the viewer, and the view from a distance offers a glimpse of a unifying compositional element: the line, first suggested in the strictly rhythmical architecture of the room and subsequently revealed as a recurring motif in the works themselves. The right rear aisle is dominated by solitary fragile tubes supported on black pivot arms that protrude into the space like the spikes of a graph, puncturing the highly composed room (Tempest Tunes). This spatial representation is echoed in a drawing that occupies a large part of the hall’s main wall and which rises upwards across the wall in a rhomboidal pattern that mirrors the design elements of the steel beams and creates an almost web-like structure of graphite-coloured contours rendered in thin pencil (Wire Dancer). This web of lines, drawn directly onto the white wall finds its echo in a glisteningly bright conglomeration of flashes of light and their traces that weave in and out of each other on a pitch-black ground, which, when viewed from afar, unfurl over a series of large panels mounted on the wall (Sternenschrift).

The group-exhibition in the Motorenhalle shows space-related works of the three artists, that pick up the analyses of the 'contemporary of the non-contemporary' (Bignia Wehrli), allow biographic-poetic associations on mental spheres and on historically connoted places or non-places (Judith Karcheter) and deal with his or her own body as an acoustic space constant (Evgenija Wassilew).

Curator: Gwendolin Kremer