Batia Suter
Sea of Ice

 

 

6 December 15 – 17 January 16

 

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Batia Suter, part of the installation Sea Of Ice, 2015, Chogolisa 1909 (detail), source: Les Glaciers, Time-Life Books, Amsterdam 1982
Batia Suter, part of the installation Sea Of Ice, 2015, Chogolisa 1909 (detail), source: Les Glaciers, Time-Life Books, Amsterdam 1982
 Batia Suter, Sea Of Ice, 2015, partial view
Batia Suter, Sea Of Ice, 2015, partial view

 

Opening: Saturday, 5.12.15, 19–22 h,
with an introduction by Batia Suter and Ellen Blumenstein, chief curator of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, at 19 h

Batia Suter’s (born 1967 in Bülach, CH lives and works in Amsterdam, NL), spatial installations merge images — some found, others manipulated — within new contexts. In this way, she creates an altered logic of perception, comprehension and memory, which brings what appears to be marginal to the center of attention, and questions our conventions for perceiving images.

The starting point for Suter’s site-specific installation Sea of Ice is an old reproduction of Caspar David Friedrich’s famous painting Das Eismeer (1823–1824). This small, black-and-white image from the book „Key Dates in Art History“ from 1979, with its intensely screened and inverted, practically abstract depiction, allows for a completely new, unencumbered view of the familiar subject.

Proceeding from this highly symbolic painting of the German Romantic era and using also other footage with a visual relation to Das Eismeer, the artist develops a fragmented image-landscape which intertwines the historical genre of landscape painting with its popular reproduction.

Sea of Ice is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.