JOHANNA DIEHL - CONSTELLATIONS

Gallery Wilma Tolksdorf presents the fifth solo show by Johanna Diehl with works from her recent series.

The exhibition will provide an insight into three new groups of works: DAS IMAGINÄRE STUDIO, ALIENATION and EIN RUHIGER TAG. Bringing these works together in a very sensitive and thoughtful hanging, Johanna Diehl reflects different insights into the notion of silence and repression, revolving around the potential and possibilities of a post-war Germany.

Within the exhibition Johanna Diehl shows the 73-part work EIN RUHIGER TAG, six monochrome coloured plates which manifest as photographic translations of the heterochromatic bindings of diaries. The plates are shown on a black and white representation of the roughened surfaces of sculptures made by the Italian sculptor Marino Marini (1901-1980). Carefully scanning the materiality and depth of the sculptures using the lens of the analogue camera, the work resembles a mapping of 20th century riots, highlighting not only the historical but also private realm of a liberal bourgeois household of the Wirtschaftswunder era.

On a second wall Diehl presents photographs of the series DAS IMAGINÄRE STUDIO in which she reflects on the utopian potential of the apparatuses of post-war electronic studios. She brings them together with photographs of re-orchestrated interiors, based on findings of her family?s photo albums. The synthesizer, mixing consoles, audiotape machines and octave filters narrate the unremitting spirit of research, the quest for innovation and mirror the playful and experimental thinking of the time.

The group of work ALIENATION (2017) makes reference to the female figures of the upper class as they appear in Michelangelo Antonioni?s films and which are remembered by Johanna Diehl as impersonations of her grand-mother. A series of loose, subjective photographs produced in contemporary Rome refer to the scenographic elements and the staging in Antonini?s movies.

Johanna Diehl (*1977 Hamburg, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Her works have been shown at various national and international exhibitions like in Paris, München, Rom, Berlin and Moskau. She has received numerous awards, most recently the working stipend of the Foundation Kunstfonds Bonn, the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, the EHF programme of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung as well as a grant from the Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo for Casa Baldi. 2018 she will have a comprehensive solo show at Haus am Waldsee Berlin.