Eight
Days A Week 2000 : DISTANZIERUNGEN 1: Vorgärten
(click for link) .
Ellen Keusen, REISE, Anna E. Stärk
Blackborne House, 6. - 27. October 2000DISTANZIERUNGEN
image:
Anna E Stark "Reise"1998
Image
: Ellen Keusen "Grobe Zeichnung 1' (3.v) 800 steel rods 1991
Ellen
Keusen: Distanzierungen - Blackborne House, Liverpool, 2000
 |
ANNA E STARK'S
JOURNEYS THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY
The Cologne painter and photographer Anna E Stark works in Cologne
and Berlin. As a freelance artist and art therapist, she has been
able to realise her dream, transforming her studio over the past 15
years into a meeting place for people interested in art, a place to
talk about art and to strike up artistic collaborations with others.
At the centre of Stark's work are human beings and their social context.
She prefers to use simple black and white photography rather than
the "beautifying glamour" of colour. She says of her work,
"My art fulfills its potential when it can touch the viewer,
which means it invites emotional participation or encourages engagement.
Therefore art as language helps to communicate and has informative
as well as therapeutic capacities. In my artistic work I concentrate
or social issues, taking the experienced world of the individual as
a starting point."
In Liverpool (at Blackburne House) she is exhibiting the series entitled
Reise, images of travellers on trains and at stations, which symbolise
at the same time a journey into the human psyche. These pictures are
not bound to a particular place. They demonstrate movement, be it
emotional or within one's mind. These journeys, reflected in the faces
of the travellers, encompass reunions and good byes on the station
platform, suggesting stages of life. The exhibition shows the perception
of travellers caught in a picture story, reflecting the gaze of instant
impressions of landscapes, situations at stations, and people.
DISTANCING 1: FRONT GARDENS ELLEN KEUSEN TALKS ABOUT HER WORK (top
left) AT BLACKBURNE HOUSE
For some time now I have been exploring how signs relate to each other.
In 1989 I produced a series of drawings, The hole and its rin and
in 1992-4 another series, About space between things. Out of this
last group- about 200 drawings in all -one particular aspect evolved:
what exactly happens at the border between black and white? I wanted
to make drawings which show the transition without a visible break.
Whilst exploring this question I was more and more drawn to its utopian
dimension. On paper I can realise something impossible to do in the
three dimensional sphere.
As a rule the existing barrier between bodies cannot be removed. For
example we deal consciously with barriers regarding our own body,
our own self. We signal through gestures and mime when we feel restricted
or mark the space we need. Front gardens reflect various ways devised
by the occupants to create a transition zone between their private
and public space. The work I am showing at Blackburne House deals
with that zone. I am also interested to find out how the front gardens
in Liverpool differ from those in Cologne.
eight days a week,Exhibition program (click red for page).
All photographic
images by Anneliese Fikentscher and Andreas Neumann.(c) 2000
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