Bettina Pousttchi 'Take Off 09', 2005, Fotografie, Ed. 5, 120 x 150 cm / Courtesy Buchmann Galerie Berlin
The Berlin-based German-Iranian artist Bettina Pousttchi (b. 1971 in Mainz, Germany) is one of the artists Buchmann Gallery, Berlin focuses on at the ART FORUM BERLIN weekend. At the art fair Buchmann Gallery showcases Bettina Pousttchi's photograph 'Parachute 03'. The large-format series of photographs 'Parachutes' is based on photographs the artist took at a flight practice in Berlin. The photographs of helicopters, airplanes, and parachutes in the sky trace an imaginary scenario though the dramatically looming formations of clouds and point in two directions.
First, the reworked large-format photographs (120 x 160 cm) evoke a classic motif from the history of art. These clouds, however, are so overdrawn by the artist's manipulation of the images that the idea of a Romantic concept of landscape is thwarted. Second, this break with an emotionally laden idealizing of nature is reinforced by the only schematically visible flying objects in the sky, which produce a dark, apocalyptic atmosphere. Like the sky, whose colours have been heavily reworked, the dark flying objects can neither be identified nor located in space. Bettina Pousttchi thus builds on her interest in nonplaces, which was also manifested in her previous series of photographs, Take Off (2005). Parachutes has a political dimension as well. Against the backdrop of current political crises, the assertions of nationstates' authority over territory, which restrict the individual concrete ways, no longer stops at the sky, even though it is a symbol of freedom and of space.
Additional to the presentation at the ART FORUM BERLIN Bettina Pousttchi's photographs 'Hetley Time' and 'Lord Hetley 2' are showcased for the weekend at Buchmann Gallery in Charlottenstrasse 13. The two large-format photographs in this exhibition (180 x 225 cm each) are the first works to have been produced in London. Taken on the streets of London, the motifs have an indexical ambiguity that is typical of the artist's approach to photography. The atmospheric blurriness is heightened by the horizontal stripes added by digital editing. The semantic charge of this cinematographic sequences produces a condensed space of association that recalls mnemonic images.
Last but not least is Bettina Pousttchi's photographie 'Take Off 09' part of the exhibition "Zeitblick" (Time Perspective) in Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau. The work shows the big clock at Tempelhof Airport. To mark the tenth anniversary of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media the exhibition "Zeitblick" is presenting a selection of 50 of the almost 400 works purchased in the last ten years for the Federal Republic of Germany's Contemporary Art Collection.
