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Artist Exhibitions:
Exhibitions
2007 Forthcoming exhibition,
Kloster Bentlage, Rheine,
Germany
2006 Galerie Bengelstraeter,
Iserlohn, Germany
2006 Galerie Limited,
Druckgraphisches Atelier u.
Edition, Münster, Germany
2006 Community exhibition:
faculty show, Felician
College, Rutherford
2006 Community exhibition: E3
Gallery, New York
2005 Community exhibition:
DARE-DARE dépôt, Montreal,
Canada
2005 Community ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Galerie Bengelstraeter,
Iserlohn, Germany
Galerie Limited,
Druckgraphisches Atelier u.
Edition, Münster, Germany ...
Further Information
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Artist Reviews:
Coming Soon!
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Collections:
Ruhrakademie, Schloss Haus
Ruhr, Germany
Kirche St. Barbara Ibbenbüren
Dickenberg
Caritas Mostar, Bosnia i
Hercegovina
National Library, Montreal,
Canada
Ribbert und Partner, Ahaus,
Germany
Concordia University,
Montreal, Canada
several private collections
...
Further Information
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Artist Statement for Daniela Schlueter
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similia similibus
There is among human beings a deep desire to understand themselves, their being, their surroundings, their past, their connection to technology, body and soul. The way to ask questions and to explore answers has been different throughout history, but the motivation has always been quite the same. Art is and has been one way to try to find answers. My work asks questions about essential issues of the conditio humana, its central theme is the human being, all embracing.
In my work I try to find a symbol which stands for the human being in its different aspects. I am looking into the archaic world, the metamorphosis in dramas, poetry, philosophy, theories of self-consciousness, apocalyptic interpretation and history from antiquity to the present. I combine them with current issues and developments such as gen-technology to find traces and repetitions to search for the idea of life. They are a source of inspiration and have leaded me towards my pictures. Maybe it is possible to discover through the ancient writing a "signature of really lived life's, which one can give, only with his own life, a new identity." (Kirk Varnedoe)
Most of my past work was composed around a box as my personal art form to deal with these topics. The projects have been composed of two parts, a book and a portfolio. The book represents the analytical, based on language, and the box with a series of images inside refer to the intuitive part, thoughts and feelings we cannot express in language alone. The portfolio is a place "to be" and to be whole, in which I bring together my ideas and feelings in textual and visual forms. It is also a place that can be touched, read, visually, soulfully and poetically experienced.
In the work similia similibus I work with lines, spaces, structures and figurative elements, and at the same time I am working with different mediums and trying to develop my own vocabulary of sings, marks, scratches and bolder images brushed or imprinted onto, or inscribed into the surface. What is important for me is the line itself, and spaces created between the lines and other elements.
The work is a combination of video elements and drawings. These elements function as a representation of the "real world". The title similia similibus taken from the Greek philosopher Anaximenes, was the starting point for this work. I discovered these words in a book about the Cross as a universal sign in the work of Joseph Beuys. The translation written in this book is a very poetic one: "The same can only be known, recognized and recognized again by the same, and only because of this destroyed." The literal translation is: "The same can only be healed by the same." These words are for me the essence and the idea of the human consciousness.
I conceive of my work as a meditation on symbolic traditions. I use the symbol of barley, of poppies and of the human genome as equiprimordial expressions of human experiences of hope and fear. It is my objective to uncover what was entailed when these symbols were not regarded as merely symbolic, but as ciphers, mediums through which reality could reveal itself, or rather embodies itself in its essence. At the same time I am interested in understanding what happened when people turned to regard these ciphers as signifiers, random signs pointing outside of themselves to that which they signify.
The images of barley and poppies have accompanied human culture for at least 8000 years. Ever since the process of human self-consciousness evolved and later, when man- and womankind settled down and planted their own food, barley and poppies have been growing side by side. Poppies sprout naturally in planted grainfields. Since this point in time in agrarian civilizations and still today, grain, especially barley as the oldest, has been a symbol of life. The poppies that grow besides it is on the other hand a symbol of death.
In most ancient civilizations human beings were sacrificed prior to the harvest. Their blood was distributed across the fields to calm and please the god of the Harvest. Within religions of nature, humans saw their gods in trees, plants and animals. From Europe to North America, from India to Africa, every culture used grain to symbolize life. That which we now have difficulty in comprehending and often conceive of only in symbolic terms, was a reality for ancient peoples. The symbols reappear in many richly imaginative forms such as Demeter and Persephone in Greek mythology and the mother of rice in East India.
Through Christianity the symbols changed from being personifications of individual gods to a sign on earth signifying the eternal being of the one God. The monotheistic conception was then superseded by the age of Enlightenment in which the language of symbols was not longer seen as a reflective expression of reality. Yet, in the arts, especially in literature, but also in political discourse the dynamic of these symbols continues to exist.
After barley and poppies, the third symbol represented in my work, the human genome which in our contemporary culture promises to enclose the essence of life. It carries with it all the hope and fear that in the past was associated with the barley-plant and the poppy flower. The human genom ‘project’ and the knowledge about the human genom represents possibly the first symbol, which has the power to change mankind. Art holds the possibility to reveal what we may call Unbehagen or Malaise around the investigation.
The archaic Gods, which had the characteristics of humans, have been replaced with our biological blue print. We might be able to change it according to our hopes, as the ancients intended to please the Gods in order to be spared their wrath and unpredictability. On the other hand, we might not succeed. Then this symbol, too, will join the others in the gallery of human images.
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