GEORG-MEISTERMANN-AUSSTELLUNG
Universität der Künste
Hardenbergstraße 33
10623 Berlin
17.09. - 14.10.2023
mo.-fr. 6:30-22:00
Das Meistermann-Stipendium zählt zu den bestdotierten Graduierten-
stipendien für junge Künstlerinnen und Künstler in Deutschland. Im Rahmen der Auswahlausstellung 2023 präsentieren 18 Absolventinnen und Absolventen der Künstlerförderung des Cusanuswerks ihre Werke und bewerben sich damit für eines von drei Stipendien. Sie werden durch die Jury des Auswahlverfahrens für Studierende an Kunsthochschulen vergeben und aus Mitteln des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung und des Vereins Ausstellungshaus für Christliche Kunst finanziert. Die Bekanntgabe der diesjährigen Preisträgerinnen und Preisträger erfolgt im Rahmen der Finissage.
TWENTY FOUR TWENTY FOUR
Valeria Schneider
SMAC
Linienstr. 57
10119 Berlin
24.11. - 17.12.2022
13:00 - 18:00
www.smac-berlin.de
She exists as in dreams. She has no sense of reality. She gets nervous because people are always interrupting her daydreams. Clarice Lispector
Valeria Schneider's new works shown at SMAC, deal with division, duality, our physical and psychological limits and how these can be transformed. Using a wide range of materials such as steel, textile and colored pencils, Schneider examines her surroundings and interpersonal relationships. Her drawing process is defined by repetition. Drawing a line, over and over, until a pattern occurs. These patterns emerge as networks, separated by untouched paper. They are dream-like maps, studies of different parts of her inner world, as well as of her environment. Her drawings of stylized eyes in a variety of colors, are at the same time geometrical objects and human body parts. They bring to mind the nazar. Nazars are amulets that are believed to protect the wearer against the evil eye, a malefic gaze that can be directed against them. In MIDNIGHT WALK a night sky is traced from a satellite image Schneider found online. Whereas a glance can be suspected to possess dangerous abilities, as is the case with the evil eye, you can be born under a lucky star. And to be starry eyed, is to be naively enthusiastic or idealistic.
Ariana Reines writes “We have to understand ourselves at all costs. Nature extends from us. Nature Mirrors us”. Schneider’s fascination with mirroring is visible in her wall-based, three-part installation, THE GARDEN. Positioned opposite the exhibition space windows, they appear as ornamental window bars. Their actual purpose is to both protect and obstruct, to create a physical boundary and prevent intruders from entering. In Schneider's versions, they have been separated from their functions and presented as distorted reflections.
Duality is echoed in Schneider's sculpture TWENTY FOUR TWENTY FOUR, in which a white cotton shirt is displayed on a hanger. The shirt has buttoning on both the front and back, but the positions of the buttons are different. On one side they are positioned left, as a women’s shirt and on the other side to the right, as a men’s shirt. This traditional way of positioning the buttons has prevailed and continues to be carried out to this day. Her work questions this order and explores the possibilities of ambivalence and transformation. The idea of metamorphosis is also present in the installation work MUTA. Borrowing its title from the Venetian Muta mask, known as the mask of silence, it consists of black painted ceramiplast pearls on a thin aramid fibre thread. Being able to transform and rearrange itself to adapt to its environment, MUTA is now found as an organic progression on the floor, as a horizontal work. Schneider’s works are circuitous, they move back and forth. Through her exhibition, she introduces a perspective that is not fixed, but changeable and fluid. Like the fungal hyphae that can choose both routes when confronted with a forked path, Schneider explores if this would be doable for us as well.
Text by Klara Erikson