Aus der Hölle in den Himmel
”Von einem gewissen Punkt an gibt es keine Rückkehr mehr. Dieser Punkt ist zu erreichen.” –Franz Kafka
ARTISTS Lutz Braun (DE), Christine Cheung (CA), Niina Lehtonen Braun (FIN), Elisabeth Mladenov (FIN), Elena Panouli (GR), Mia Saharla (FIN), Marco Scola (IT) and Mirja Ylänne (FIN).
Lutz Braun (born 1976 in Schleswig, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. In the current exhibition Musterzimmer presents Braun’s painting “Zero Habitat”, by courtesy of Galerie Nagel Draxler (Berlin and Cologne).
Christine Cheung (born 1979 in Calgary, Canada) lives and works in Berlin. The artist is a recipient of the Joseph Beuys Scholarship at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Canada and numerous grants and awards. Her work is shown internationally, including as part of the permanent collection of the Sørlandet Art Museum in Norway. She has been featured on CBC Radio, the Globe and Mail and Kunst magazine for her images of unsettled landscape, imagined spaces and memories from the past. She is currently working with markers, paint and Sumi ink on mylar, paper and canvas using gestural marks in response to her surroundings. In the current exhibition, Musterzimmer presents her multi-layered painting “To the Sea”, a meditative work embodying a sense of stillness and movement. The painting is part of a current investigation which explores dream-consciousness, desire, longing, loss and forgetting.
Niina Lehtonen Braun (born 1975 in Helsinki, Finland) lives and works in Berlin. The artist’s work comprises participatory performances and collages made from various materials including photographs, drawings and magazine-footage combined with texts. In the last years she has created several collage series devoted to themes dealing with female identity, death and tradition. Lehtonen Braun´s work does not only try to unveil the persistency of the distribution of gender roles, but also to ironically invert them. In this way she attempts to re-negotiate traditional ideas about gender and identity, opening up a dialectic space for reflection. Her installation “Indian Summer Songbook” in the current exhibition at Musterzimmer consists of images and texts, especially song lyrics and poems. The installation’s shape resembles a diary, highlighting scenes from travelling life and creating space for reflection by sharing intimate memories and thoughts.
Elisabeth Mladenov (born 1981 in Helsinki, Finland) lives and works in Berlin. Mladenov’s work explores the most intimate settings of human existence. Currently her work revolves around the realm of the bed, and the charged, sometimes pivotal moments that take place there. Her painting “No Fervour of Mine” in the current exhibition at Musterzimmer is part of a series that lends itself to the surrealism of dreams; of our need for renewal through temporary escape into absurd, contorted mindscapes.
Elena Panouli (born 1983 in Novorossiysk, Russia) grew up in the former Soviet Union and Greece. She lives and works in Berlin. The artist uses constructed space as her subject. Always excluding natural elements which are of no measurements, her space offers no escape, and thus remains timeless and inaccessible. A world that is imposed upon us – shuts us out. Her photographic work in the current exhibition at Musterzimmer is a part of her series “Sincerity of Line” that portrays deserted monuments of urban life.
Mia Saharla (born 1983 in Tampere, Finland) lives and works in Tampere. The artist considers the painting process a physical conversation between coincidences and intentions. Paint is added and removed. The figures of Saharla’s paintings are not complete, rather in constant shift and motion, taking shape between formations and dissolving the identity, such as in her paintings “Queen” and “Indian” in the current exhibition at Musterzimmer. Portraying psychological movement is often the starting point of her works.
Marco Scola (born 1978 in Catania, Italy) lives and works in Berlin. In the current exhibition Musterzimmer presents Scola’s painting “The Chair” from his “Beautiful Monsters” series. Scola works with various mediums, such as painting, photography, silkscreen, sculpture and design. Born in Sicily, Marco Scola moved in 1999 to Rome, where he continued to develop his art and graduated from l’Accademia di Belle Arti. The variety of artistic influences that Rome offered – from complex ancient and modern art to the contemporary street art – shaped his artistic vision.
Mirja Ylänne (born 1978 in Vantaa, Finland) lives and works in Berlin. In the current exhibition Musterzimmer presents her painting “Man with a Hat”, in which the artist experiments with acrylic paint, letting it flow across the canvas like watercolours. For Ylänne, figurative painting is a form of communication. “At best a painting is a thought so well formed that it travels through emotions. I’m interested in assembling a fight between the subject and the painting on the canvas. A fight at best is a cultivating process; without it there is no evolution”, the artist says.