Bettina Pousttchi’s New Exhibition At The Berlinische Galerie Reconsiders Reality

From photographic narratives to architectural interventions, the German artist pushes boundaries and experiments with alternative techniques across mediums. In her works, photography, sculpture, architecture, and politics achieve surprising cohesion. IGNANT documented the meticulous installation process of ‘In Recent Years’, as Pousttchi walked us through the concept and intriguing message behind it. For her first show at the Berlinische Galerie, Pousttchi has staged an eye-catching photographic intervention that explores the relationship between photography and architecture. Photographic prints on semi-transparent foil, carefully applied to the museum facade, create a net-like pattern that generates an architectural language that blends two different cultural contexts, Asia and Europe. Questioning the idea of a global reality, the installation engages with perceptions of space and time in the digital age and contemplates the complex relationship between history and memory from a transnational perspective.

Inside the museum, Pousttchi’s renowned black-and-white photographic series, ‘World Time Clock’, expand on the concepts of reality, time and synchronicity. Close-up photographs of public clocks shot in 24 time zones, across eight years, display the exact same time: 1:55 pm. The repetitive pattern gives the illusion that the moment captured by the camera is the same across all photographs, narrating a globalized reality that is entirely disconnected from time and space. Shown alongside the thought-provoking photographs are urban objects, such as bicycle racks and crash barriers, that have been mechanically transformed and arranged into sculptural groups across the gallery space. Their original function completely erased, the ordinary objects emerge as re-imagined abstract realities and receive a new level of meaning, left entirely to the visitor’s interpretation.

ADDRESS
Berlinische Galerie
Alte Jakobstraße 124-128
10969 Berlin

OPENING HOURS
Wed-Mon: 10.00-18.00
Closed on 24.12.2019 and 31.12.2019