Maria und Natalia Petschatnikov, Anja Michaela Kretz – GESTERN HEUTE MORGEN
31.08. – 17.11.2018
back to overviewGESTERN HEUTE MORGEN
Anja Michaela (früher Anja Wiebelt)
Maria und Natalia Petschatnikov
Vernissage: 30. August 2018, 18 Uhr
Ausstellungsdauer: 31.08.-17.11.2018
Öffnungszeiten: DI-FR 10-18 Uhr, SA 12-16 Uhr
Die Stern-Wywiol Galerie zeigt neue Arbeiten ihrer Galeriekünstlerinnen Anja Michaela (früher Anja Wiebelt) und Maria und Natalia Petschatnikov (MNP).
Auf den ersten Blick scheinen die beiden Positionen wenig gemein zu haben, denn MNP arbeiten gegenständlich und Anja Michaela (früher Anja Wiebelt) abstrakt. Bei genauem Hinsehen zeigen sich jedoch verblüffende Parallelen. Beide spüren dem Phänomen der Erinnerung nach, die wandelbar und trügerisch ist und aus der Vergangenheit ins Heute und Morgen wirkt.
Anja Michaela stellt in der Ausstellung eine neue Werkserie vor, die an Musikinstrumente erinnert. Und tatsächlich bestehen die Werke aus Metallteilen, die zur Herstellung von Blasinstrumenten verwendet werden. Die Künstlerin verarbeitet diese zu neuen „Instrumenten“, kombiniert disparate Einzelteile, verlängert sie, lässt sie sich winden – fast so, als seien sie froh, ihrer Bestimmung zu entkommen und sich nun frei zu entwickeln: Partner zu finden, neue Klänge zu erproben, den Raum zu erobern … Dabei sind die neuen Objekte so perfekt gearbeitet, dass man sie als glaubhaft empfindet. Ihre Windungen sind teils labyrinthisch und verwirrend, ganz wie bei realen Musikinstrumenten, die man aus der Erinnerung kaum richtig nachzeichnen kann. So sind Anja Michaelas Werke auch eine Metapher für die sich verselbständigende Erinnerung. Ihre Instrumente lassen Töne im inneren Ohr des Betrachters entstehen, sie tragen unsere Erinnerung an Musik in sich. Diese und andere Werke ihres vielschichtigen, poetischen Œuvres werden in einer raumfüllenden Inszenierung präsentiert.
Maria und Natalia Petschatnikov stellen ihr Projekt PABALTYS vor. Sie zeigen erstmals einen animierten Film, dem mehr als 3000 Handzeichnungen zugrunde liegen. Der Ursprung dieses Projektes liegt in der Wiederentdeckung eines alten Super-8-Films, der ihre Besuche bei den Großeltern auf dem Land in Litauen wiedergibt, als sie selbst noch Kinder waren. In Folge dieser Entdeckung entstanden zunächst Zeichnungen, die die realen Geschehnisse wie Filmstills abbilden, sowie Zeichnungen erinnerter Szenen. Später reisten MNP zurück an den Ort ihrer Kindheitssommer und gingen auf Spurensuche. Der Film handelt vom Plan und der Umsetzung dieses Vorhabens und ihren Entdeckungen. Dieser sehr persönliche Ansatz spiegelt das fundamentale Gewicht der Kindheitserinnerungen, die uns prägen, wieder – das Festhalten an ihnen, ihren Verlust, die Suche und die Sehnsucht nach ihnen, ihr Wirken ins Heute und Morgen. PABALTYS wird in einer Gesamtinstallation aus Film, Zeichnungen, Objekten und Dioramen zu entdecken sein.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
YESTERDAY TODAY TOMORROW is an exhibition that feels like it is somewhere between a snapshot and a long-distance run.
We are showing new works by our artists Anja Michaela and Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov, who are stylistically very opposite and yet have a great deal in common. The artists are concerned with exploring and describing a central phenomenon of our existence - memory. In other words, something that can be imagined as an event in YESTERDAY, like a point on a timeline, and that then continues to have an effect in TODAY and TOMORROW, in the future.
I would like to tell you a personal story about this:
I spent wonderful years of my childhood in a sleepy village on the Baltic coast. There was only one road, unpaved, in front of the house was water and behind it hills with heath. There was a sawmill where it smelled wonderful and where fat horses pulled the logs across the road. In the herring season, the cutters passed by the house and the fishermen's wives stood in long orange smocks in little stalls by the water, pulping the fish from the nets. I haven't visited this place since my grandmother died over 20 years ago. When I talked to my father some time ago about this place and that I could go there again, his answer was: "You don't have to. It looks like Blankenese."
So I decided not to visit this place. It has shaped me, determines a scenic ideal to this day, determines my ideal of childhood and also of family. I don't want my inner image of this place, its smells and its atmosphere to be overlaid by the new circumstances.
Memory is what remains of the life we lived. It is a treasure, sometimes also a burden. Both can change and take on a life of their own.
Anja Michaela and Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov address precisely these processes in their work: How exactly does it work, memory? And how can it be put into a form, the fading, the glorification, the blurring, the additions and the omissions?
The first thing that catches the eye in Anja Michaela's exhibition is the brand new series of works on musical instruments. Anja Michaela is currently enjoying a one-year residency in Paris. She has met a musical instrument maker there. The company provides her with parts of brass instruments. From these she forms her own instruments. Always with at least two funnels, always about communication, about a relationship between two or more voices. The only work with only one funnel is called DIVA - here the communication really seems to run only in one direction.
Have you ever tried to draw a trumpet impromptu? Just do it once, you will be surprised how little exact your memory is of such an object. Mouthpiece and funnel, somehow curved in between... Most people probably don't remember much more than that. What about more complex arrangements? Or with causal connections or even feelings? Most of the time we only have a few set pieces - funnel, mouthpiece - and their connection is unclear, even variable or whimsical. Anja Michaela finds surprising and plausible forms for these multi-layered processes. Her works convince with a clear artistic statement and delight the eye with grace and precision craftsmanship. Anja Michaela learned the goldsmith's trade in a previous life - mastery of material and technique are always highly gratifying.
The same can be said for the work of Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov (MNP). Their core medium, if you will, is painting, which they master with virtuosity. In addition, they draw brilliantly, they work sculpturally, they make spatial installations and they also make films, recently.
Over a year ago, MNP rediscovered old recordings and films from their childhood. They document the summers with their beloved grandparents in Pabaltys, a tiny village in Lithuania, in the middle of the forest.
The desire to see this place again after decades quickly arises. A project takes shape: We are going to Pabaltys - a journey into the unknown, into yesterday and today.
MNP choose drawing as their artistic technique, a medium that is as fast as it is versatile. Before, during and after the journey, a total of over 3000 drawings are created, offering different perspectives. MNP draw with watercolour chalk on semi-transparent polyester drawing film, which almost looks like film material. There are sheets that have been treated with water and have a translucent, blurred look, almost like old film material. Others have a very clear, dry stroke and look much more real and clear, almost documentary. In this way, they are able to depict different temporal as well as emotional levels: the present-day memory of childhood, the real images of childhood, the images of the journey experienced and, with all of this, the feelings associated with this place and this period of life.
From over 3000 hand drawings, the two have made their very first film and have brought us as a gallery to show our very first video work.
I cordially invite you to watch the film, and indeed the entire exhibition, away from the hustle and bustle of the vernissage and find your own Pabaltys. Then you will surely hear the vibrations inside you that associate Anja Michaela's works - maybe even music!
Dr Kathrin Reeckmann