Studio B|vdL Summer Showcase #3 Susanne Schwieter
Against the backdrop of the ever-evolving relationship between humans and technology, the exhibition CURRENT QUARRY illuminates processes of identity shift between analog and digital images. These shifts manifest in linguistic, visual, and physical forms. Artist Susanne Schwieter addresses the question of what technological advancement, digital thinking, and a growing image archive mean and achieve in a societal context. The close interconnection between the analog and the digital plays a pivotal role.
At the heart of the exhibition lies the long-running series of works titled “Cruiser,” a set of large-format paintings that emerged from a Google image of a marble block in the Carrara quarry. They are abstract, the original motif no longer decipherable, emphasizing the ephemeral nature of images, language, and ultimately identity. These works engage with questions of legacy and copyright in the digital age, as well as the act of appropriation.
Schwieter’s approach is intuitive, with motifs emerging in an ongoing process. Each work within a series consistently references a shared photographic source. Shapes and silhouettes move from one work to the next, akin to actors in a theatrical performance. This dynamic continues in the CURRENT QUARRY exhibition, where the works span all the spaces across the two levels and engage in dialogue with one another.
On display
September 15 – October 19, 2023
By appointment only.
book now
Studio B|vdL Summer Showcase #2 Elizabeth Charnock
Elizabeth Charnock’s exhibition at Studio B|vdL explores the overlap between art and architecture. She presents drawings, sculptural pieces and videos from the last 8 years, spanning her time spent studying in Dresden to her current Berlin-based practice. Though continuously evolving in style, her work has been consistently influenced by her interest in the urban environment and spatial relationships within it.
By referencing a large body of documentary photography, she mentally collages multiple architectural elements into imagined environments, meticulously rendered with multiple layers of ink on paper, or sculpted from ceramics. As artist rather than architect, she is free to imagine these scenes in any way she chooses, hence real-life constraints of scale, perspective and functionality become extraneous.
Her work is often self-referential, the drawings acting as the plans for architectural models or vice versa. She captures moments ‘in-between’ – miniature snapshots of inactivity and tranquility before or after human interference. The viewer is left only with traces of events, inviting us to form our own narrative. The uninhabited spaces evoke feelings of isolation, offering familiarity – but only at a distance – whilst also inviting us to reassess our own sense of place within these miniature worlds.
Originally from the UK, Elizabeth Charnock has lived and worked in Berlin since 2015. She completed a bachelor’s degree in Art and Design at the University of Leeds and was awarded an academic scholarship by DAAD in 2014 to continue her studies in Fine Art at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. She has exhibited in Germany, Poland, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Studio B|vdL Summer Showcase #1 Studio JUMI – Decomposition
Studio JUMI is a Berlin-based weaving studio working at the interface of art, craft and design. In their joint work, the artists Julia Buntzel and Miriam Rose Gronwald are committed to the preservation of traditional hand-weaving as well as its further development as a visual art.
The fundamental method of weaving is the interlacing of two individual thread systems crossing at right angles to each other. The warp threads are stretched vertically across a loom and are individually threaded through the eyes of a heddle. Groups of heddles hang on frames called harnesses. The tie-up of the foot-operated treadles with the harnesses enables the raising and lowering of the warp threads, creating a shed through which the weft thread passes.
Weaving is one of the oldest crafts in the world and it has been developed and optimized over many generations and by many cultures worldwide. The recent ‘artification’ of the craft has allowed the process of creating a fabric to be perceived as a free, creative medium rather than simply as the manufacture of a necessary product. Form and utility, which play an overriding role in product design and manufacture, recede into the background as the artistic context is prioritized. Combining unconventional and recycled materials from the textile industry and other sources with traditional pattern drafts, Studio JUMI aims to strip hand-weaving of its practical interpretation to instead highlight its broad technical and creative potential.
In the Studio BvdL exhibition Decomposition, Studio JUMI pushes the boundaries of the medium by the fragmenting, dissolving, and condensing the grid-like structure of the woven fabric. The displayed works include Open Archive–an ongoing collection of weaving samples created in the course of their research process—as well as a translucent wall hanging and three-dimensional surface structures.
Studio JUMI is strongly influenced and inspired by the former weaving workshops of the Bauhaus School in Weimar, Germany and Black Mountain College in North Carolina, USA, and by the works of textile artists such as Anni Albers, Gunta Stölzl, Sheila Hicks and Leonore Tawney, who combined the craft of hand-weaving with the language of modern art. Their knowledge influenced and was transferred to many other art and design forms. Today, given the growing interest in hand crafts as well as the need for sustainability and a more conscious approach to consumption, the role of weaving workshops and the potential of the woven fabric itself are being perceived in a new light.
Stay connected with Studio B|vdL by signing up for our newsletter.