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Indepth Arts News:
"Charlotte Schleiffert: Berlin Works"
2008-05-09 until 2008-06-28
Galerie Annie Gentils
Antwerpen, ,
BE Belgium
Charlotte Schleiffert: Berlin Works is presented at Galerie Annie Gentils in Antwerpen between May 9 and JUne 28, 2008. Charlotte Schleiffert’s highly-expressive coloured drawings and paintings reflect socially relevant topics such as power, oppression, poverty, displacement or prostitution. The artist, who lives in Holland and China, finds her motifs in newspaper reports and magazines from the countries in which she is living. Characteristic colours, moods, patterns or typical materials of the place where she is staying also flow into her works: for example, during her stay in China Schleiffert also worked with rice-paper and satin fabrics. With her drawings, she aims to ‘hold onto’ relevant themes before they can disappear in the daily media current of the global age. In Berlin, Charlotte Schleiffert discovered sheets of gift wrap, the colours and textures of which recall wallpapers frequently used in this country. She integrated them into her work as the backgrounds to a series of small-format drawings produced in Berlin, which are based on current press reports e.g. on the situation in Darfur, discussion of youth violence, or the Palestinian exodus from Gaza.
Schleiffert often relates the drawings to large-format portraits of women from glamorous magazines, which she monumentalises into pro-vocative-expressive pin-ups, seemingly aggressive heroines and overpowering idols. Cultural codes and foreign rites are mixed with text fragments from the media and cool street slogans. The spatial installation of the drawings and collages heightens the images’ fascination and makes it difficult to evade their impact – the artist’s critical commentary on the presence and influence of the media in a global world. (text Künstlerhaus Bethaniën)
Part of the exhibition will show the drawings Charlotte Schleiffert made during her stay at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (September 2007-April 2008). The rather ‘dark’ drawings are confronted with the cheerful paintings Schleiffert made in Rotterdam during the summer of 2007.
Works of Charlotte Schleiffert will be presented at Scope Basel.
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