"All Tomorrow's Ruins"
Tracey Snelling, Lee Maelzer, Thibault Brunet

curated by Sonia Voss

Exhibition: 10 – 31 October 2021

Opening: Saturday, 9 October, 2 -10 pm
Curator's tour: 4 pm in Englisch
All artists will be present

Finissage: Sunday, 31 October, 2-6 pm
Curator's tour: 4 pm in Englisch
Tracey Snelling will be present

Artists have always been fascinated by ruins. As traces of a bygone era, they remind us that our work product, too, is destined to become a ruin. Ruins constitute a source both for interpreting our history and for imagining our future.

The three artists presented move the ruin into the heart of their work, focussing on its origins and its evolution and culling from the ubiquitous flood of images in online news, in magazines and films. En route to disappearing themselves, these images here give rise to novel forms, on the border between photography and other media.

Brunet’s Boîte Noire is a series of renderings—on paper and tapestries—drawn from a 3D space modelled out of thousands of internet images of ruins from the war in Syria.

The collages of Maelzer present visions at once apocalyptic and lyrical—futurist hypotheses quilted together from various traces we leave in cities, nature and even outer space. In her installations, Snelling recreates parts of the Chinese cities Chongqing and Yangzhou, as well as the urban village Caochangdi, with modern high-rises and makeshift shelters overflowing with images as garish as they are ephemeral.

Thibault Brunet, based in Paris, has developed a practice based on real and imaginary topographies and virtually generated images, using technologies such as 3D scanners, computer software and video games. Brunet graduated from the Paul Valéry University in Montpellier and the Nîmes Art Academy. His work has been presented in numerous solo shows in France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain, and Germany (EMOP Berlin 2012) and in group exhibitions, among others, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Spinnerei, Leipzig. He is the winner of the 2019 MAD/ADAGP Artist Book Revelation Award, the 2016 Photo London John Kobal Residency Award, the 2014 PMU/Le Bal Carte Blanche Award, the 2013 FOAM Talent Award, and the 2012 BNF Bourse du Talent Award. He was part of the 2011 edition of reGeneration2 at Lausanne’s Musée de l’Élysée. During a residency at the Institut Français in New York, Brunet began his Boîte Noire series, creating a virtual 3D space from online media photos of the war ruins in Syria.

Lee Maelzer is a London based artist. Her practice spans from painting to collages made with found photographs that evoke uncanny environments and situations, often raising questions about the tension between nature and the urban environment. Maelzer studied at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art in London. Since 2005, she has had nine solo exhibitions in the UK and has exhibited internationally in numerous group shows. She has also curated several exhibitions in London galleries. She received the Bryan Robertson Trust Award 2019, the Abbey Fellowship 2004 at The British School at Rome, participated twice in Bloomberg ARTFutures, and took part in several residency programs in Europe, Tunisia, Mexico, and the US. Her work was featured in The Age of Collage 3 (Gestalten Books). Among other academic positions, Maelzer is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at the University of East London.

Tracey Snelling is an American artist living and working in Berlin. Through the use of sculpture, photography, video, and large-scale installation, she gives a personal impression of a place, its people and their experience. Snelling has exhibited in international museums and institutions and has had solo shows throughout the US, as well as in China, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, and Italy. She received the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2015), a fellowship at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan (2017), an Artist Residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2017/2018), and the Foundwork Art Prize (2020). She produced commissioned works at the Historisches Museum Frankfurt and Facebook in California. Her installation Shanghai/Chongqing Hot pot/Mixtape was presented in the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale 2019 and her Maüsebunker at the UIAV during the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2020.

"All Tomorrow's Ruins"
Tracey Snelling, Lee Maelzer, Thibault Brunet

kuratiert von Sonia Voss

Ausstellung: 10. bis 31. Oktober 2021

Eröffnung: Samstag, 9. Oktober, 14 - 22 Uhr
Kuratorenführung 16 Uhr, auf Englisch
alle Künstler werden anwesend sein

Finissage: Sonntag, 31. Oktober, 14-18 Uhr
Kuratorenführung 16 Uhr, auf Englisch
Tracey Snelling wird anwesend sein

Ruinen haben Künstler schon immer fasziniert. Sie sind Spuren einer verlorenen Vergangenheit und erinnern uns an die Vergänglichkeit unserer eigenen Konstruktionen, die zu Ruinen werden sollen. Sie sind eine Quelle der Interpretation unserer Geschichte und der Vorstellung von unserer Zukunft.

Die drei vorgestellten Künstler stellen die Ruine, ihre Anfänge und Verwandlungen in den Mittelpunkt ihrer Arbeit, wobei sie Bilder aus dem Online-Nachrichtenstrom, aus Zeitschriften und Filmen verwenden. Diese Bilder, die selbst dazu bestimmt sind, zu verschwinden, bringen neue Formen hervor, die sich an der Grenze zur Fotografie und zu anderen Medien bewegen. Brunets Boîte Noire ist eine Reihe von Renderings - Papierdrucke und Wandteppiche - aus einem 3D-Raum, der aus Tausenden von im Internet verfügbaren Aufnahmen der Ruinen des Krieges in Syrien modelliert wurde.

Maelzers Collagen sind zugleich apokalyptische und poetische Visionen - futuristische Hypothesen, die aus unseren Spuren in den Städten, in der Natur und sogar im Weltraum konstruiert werden.

In ihren Installationen stellt Snelling Teile der chinesischen Städte Chongqing und Yangzhou sowie des urbanen Dorfes Caochangdi nach, mit modernen Türmen und behelfsmäßigen Unterkünften, die mit ebenso glitzernden wie flüchtigen Bildern durchtränkt sind.