Bettina Pousttchi

Bettina Pousttchi (born 1971 in Mainz, Germany) is a German-Iranian artist. She lives and works in Berlin.

Life

Bettina Pousttchi spent her childhood in Germany and part of the time in Iran. From 1990 to 1992 she studied art at the Université de Paris VIII, and from 1992 to 1997 philosophy, art history, and film theory in Cologne and Bochum. From 1995 to 1999 she studied with Professor Rosemarie Trockel and Professor Gerhard Merz at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. From 1999 to 2000, she attended the renowned Whitney Independent Studio Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, where Isaac Julien, Yvonne Rainer, Mary Kelly, Hal Foster, and Benjamin Buchloh were among her teachers. After a time spent assisting other artists (including Nam June Paik), in 1997 she began exhibiting her own work in Germany and abroad. She participated twice in the Venice Biennale (2003, 2009). Her works are found in numerous private and public collections, including the collection of the Federal Republic of Germany.[1] In 2014 the artist received the Wolfsburg Award for Contemporary Art.

Work

Echo, 2009, 970 paper posters on the façade of Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin

Bettina Pousttchi works with photography, video and sculpture.

Façades

Since 2009, Bettina Pousttchi has been realizing photographic interventions in public space. Her photo installation Echo on Schlossplatz in Berlin covered the entire exterior façade of the Temporäre Kunsthalle for half a year. Extending nearly 2,000 square meters, the installation consisted of 970 different paper posters, and formed a continuous motif that recalled the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic), the building which had just been demolished on that very site. On the façade of Art Basel 2010, she mounted Basel Time, a large photo installation that alluded to the imminent demolition of the hall as part of a redesign of Basel’s Messeplatz. At the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the artist presented the site-specific photo installation Framework (2012) in its rotunda and on its eastern façade. This work’s point of departure was the building’s historical and urban context. In London, she conceived the photo installation Piccadilly Windows (2013) for the Hauser & Wirth Gallery building on Piccadilly, covering their windows with a photographic pattern. In 2014, the artist transformed the Nasher Sculpture Center Dallas into a Drive-Thru Museum, referencing the site’s history and the architecture of the Renzo Piano building. Her most extensive photo installation to this point is The City (2014), which covered three sides of the Wolfsburg castle with a 2,150 square meter photographic print. The motif shows ten skyscrapers that have been the world’s highest buildings, grouping them together into an imaginary single transnational skyline.

Photography

Pousttchi’s most important photographic works include the architectural interventions Echo (2009), Framework (2012) and The City (2014) as well as the series World Time Clock (2008-2014), Parachutes (2007), Take Off (2005) and Starker Staat (2003). Typically, Pousttchi’s editing introduces elements that transform the image, often in the form of horizontal black-and-white lines. For her, the use of this visual code questions the documentary value of photography.

Video

Between 1999 and 2002, Pousttchi produced primarily single-channel videos including Auf gute Nachbarschaft (To Good Neighbors; 1999), Die Katharina-Show (2000), Double Empire (2000), Reset (2001), and Line (2005). Since 2003, her videos have increasingly become part of three-dimensional works. For example, the video sculpture Landing of 2006 employed 10 monitors and 25 crowd barriers to create an atmosphere of enigmatic uncertainty.

Sculpture

Crowd barriers and street bollards occur frequently in the artist’s sculptures and, in the tradition of object art, she transforms them. At the 2009 Venice Biennale, Pousttchi’s sculpture Cleared, consisting of two crowd barriers made of security glass, was part of the Glasstress exhibition. The sculpture series Double Monuments for Flavin and Tatlin debuted in her extensive solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel 2011, curated by Adam Szymczyk. The use of these street objects address questions of limits, the forces at work therein, and the transformative energy released by passing them, underlining the artist´s transnational approach to her work.

Collaborations

Bettina Pousttchi is a member of the Brutally Early Club, founded by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Markus Miessen in London in 2006 along with Shumon Basar, Tom McCarthy, Zak Kyes, Charles Arsene-Henry, Marina Abramović, Ingo Niermann, Sam Thorne and Jefferson Hack. This salon takes the form of spontaneous meetings in public cafés in London, Berlin, Paris, and New York. At 6:30 a.m., current issues in art, literature, and the sciences are discussed. In addition, she has realized installations in collaboration with the architect Markus Miessen and the artist Rosemarie Trockel[2] and has taken part in a film by Lawrence Weiner (How Far Is There, 1999). She produced an interview video with Daniel Buren in 2010 on artistic practice in public spaces Conversations in the Studio #3.

Selected exhibitions

Grants and Awards

Literature


References

  1. ↑ Zeitblick: Ankäufe der Sammlung Zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1998–2008, Dumont 2008
  2. ↑ Susanne Kaufmann: When Pousttchi met Trockel, in: Time magazine, 7 April 2003, 68/69

External links

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