Smoke & Dust
Lisa Oppenheim, Billowing. As we were driving up to Norfolk yesterday I saw the Enfield fire; where a Sony distribution centre set ablaze by rioters was just pouring out smoke over the motorway. The sheer amount of smoke was quite surprising, and today smoke was still covering the motorway. I feel such despair at people who have taken to looting; so angry at the destruction people can cause, 2011/2012, 2012. Courtesy the artist and Klosterfelde, Berlin.
Lisa Oppenheim: Everyone’s Camera
Kunstverein Göttingen is pleased to present Lisa Oppenheim’s first solo exhibition at a German institution. Oppenheim’s work reflects an ongoing exploration of the medium and history of photography. The exhibition brings together a selection of recent photographic work, in which pattern, repetition, and the surface of the photograph itself play a central role. An atmospheric quality is carried throughout the works on view. Images of the moon, billowing smoke, and printed fabrics have all been produced without the help of a camera. Made from negatives sourced through internet archives and Flickr, the photographs are printed with traditional darkroom techniques, or textiles are placed on photographic paper to create photograms. Despite the lushness of her borrowed imagery, neither romanticism nor nostalgia gains the upper hand. Using appropriation, visual reduction, and serial arrangement the artist engages in a subtle reflection on conflicts that continue to define the photographic medium: between the original and the replica, between representative and the abstract.
An artist book is being published in conjunction with the exhibition.
Lisa Oppenheim was born in New York in 1975. She studied film and video at the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College and took part in the Whitney Independent Studio Program. From 2004 to 2005 she was a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Her work has recently been exhibited at the New Museum and Guggenheim, New York; Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin; and the 21er Haus, Vienna.
Lisa Oppenheim:
Everyone’s Camera
Until February 24, 2013
Kunstverein Göttingen
Gotmarstrasse 1
37073 Göttingen, Germany
Hours: Tuesday–Friday 2–6pm;
Saturday and Sunday 11–5pm
T +49 (0)551 44899
info@kunstvereingoettingen.de