Veronika Kellndorfer: Lichtspiel

Christopher Grimes Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Veronika Kellndorfer representing the modern architectural landmarks of Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Lind, and Rudolf Schindler. This exhibition is a result of a residency by Kellndorfer at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles in 2003. Her work re-examines the physical and social construction of space through her distinct technique of binding silk-screened photographic images onto large glass panels at 1472 degrees farenheit.

Kellndorfer began her studies in Vienna and continued them at the Hochschule de Kunste in Berlin from 1984 to 1990. Originally through painting and then through photography, she has been concerned with the ephemeral nature of architecture and space. With her new work, the viewer becomes acutely aware of the solidity of the ink’s imprint as the glass panels’ reflective nature invites the viewer and its surroundings to enter into the work and “see” these architectural sites differently. As Helga Lutz, an art historian from Berlin writes, “The confusion that arises from the glass panels – their uncertain condition between image and non-image, the ambivalence of permeability and impermeability that undermines, mirrors and makes uncertain the act of seeing – is in striking contrast to the highly sober character of their physical material. What the photographic material shows is well known, indeed famous. Here are the icons of modern architecture in Los Angeles...Yet they are photographed in a decidedly unspectacular way, which both avoids defamiliarization and declines to emphasize particular individual styles. These photographs have the clearly recognizable aim of precisely rendering the functional clarity of the architecture.”

Kellndorfer lives and works in Berlin. She has exhibited throughout Russia, the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. She had a solo show at the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin and has exhibited at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh and Contemporary Art Center, Moscow. She has participated in large-scale public commissions all over Germany. She has held residencies at Villa Massimo in Rome and Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. She will be participating in a group show in 2008 at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in Wolfsburg, Germany.

Veronika Kellndorfer
Lichtspiel