UNDRESSED

The title of the exhi­bi­tion UNDRESSED asks the viewer to explore which modes the posi­ti­ons gathe­red here use to justify the claim to art that goes beyond the mere rep­re­sen­ta­tion of an unclo­thed body — because all nudes are „und­res­sed”, which is their pre­re­qui­site, but „only und­res­sed” can at best claim ana­to­mi­cally or ero­ti­cally moti­va­ted inte­rest.
The 23 works in this exhi­bi­tion approach the female nude in a highly dif­fe­ren­tia­ted way:
Alexa Meade trans­forms the sub­ject into a repro­duc­tion of its­elf, where the sur­face beco­mes the car­rier of its own pain­terly inter­pre­ta­tion, espe­cially when the sub­jects are living or peris­hable items, such as people or fruits. The ephe­me­ral nature of her pain­ting style is evi­dent and what sur­vi­ves of Alexa Meade’s work is the pho­to­graph. Both the pain­ting and pho­to­gra­phic tech­ni­ques are so tightly coor­di­na­ted that the result is a flat, two dimensio­nal space, which achie­ves trompe l’oeil, wher­ein the third dimen­sion is dis­cer­ni­ble only in cer­tain areas, such as near the eyes or hair. In col­la­bo­ra­tion with actress Sheila Vand, Meade deve­l­o­ped the 2012 series “MILK”, in which milk is the per­man­ently chan­ging car­rier of paint that remo­ves the spa­tial con­text of the model and adopts a new, ever-changing iden­tity with the flow of color.
Josef Karl’s nude pho­to­graphs are often cha­rac­te­ri­zed by the models’ pro­vo­ca­tive poses, but the sta­gings, which are always crea­ted in close coope­ra­tion with the sit­ters, refer to their some­ti­mes pro­ble­ma­tic life paths, enri­ched by offi­cial docu­ments or per­so­nal DNA, with which the artist wants to under­line the “uni­quen­ess and authen­ti­city of every per­son”.
Both Mag­da­lena Wos­inska and Kor­bi­nian Vogt focus on the sta­ging of the body — Mag­da­lena Wos­inska: her own body — in the great out­doors. While Vogt is con­cer­ned with the visua­liza­tion of the sen­sual expe­ri­ence of nature, with the con­trast bet­ween the dra­ma­tic moun­tain back­drop and phy­si­cal vul­nera­bi­lity, Wos­inska cele­bra­tes in her pho­to­graphs the Ame­ri­can dream of unli­mited free­dom, inclu­ding a some­ti­mes iro­ni­cally bro­ken sex-drugs-and-rock’n’roll atti­tude.
Loreen Hinz, on the other hand, can be loca­ted in the tra­di­tion of pic­to­ria­lism: Her pic­to­rial crea­ti­ons refer to the style canon of por­trait pain­ting from the 16th to 19th cen­tu­ries, but wit­hout imi­ta­ting a spe­ci­fic style or a spe­ci­fic artist. The result are recor­dings of grace­ful female beau­ties, inte­gra­ted into a dream­like, unreal ambience wit­hout any actual spa­tial defi­ni­tion, so that, in con­junc­tion with deli­be­rate blur­ring, an impres­sion of dema­te­ria­liza­tion and trans­cen­dence is crea­ted.
The four other artists in the exhi­bi­tion — Julian Baker, Shu-Wei Huang, Alio­cha Mer­ker and Sasha Sta­ma­tow­ski — are united by the joint model Vin­cent Litt­le­hat. In all of her pro­jects, which are mostly of a con­cep­tual nature, Vin­cent takes a decisive part in the pro­cess of crea­ting images by con­side­ring her rela­ti­onship to the viewer, using the camera lens to bring him clo­ser or assi­gning him the place of the dis­tant viewer.