Almut Linde. Radical Beauty

About

Reality is her material. Using the term “Dirty Minimal”, the Hamburg-based conceptual artist, photographer and sculptor Almut Linde developed her own interpretation of US Minimal Art as far back as the end of the 1980s. “Dirty Minimal” stands for the reduced formal language of Minimal Art—which Linde frees from its aesthetic self-referencing, transferring it into an everyday context. Linde intervenes in existing structures, challenges familiar processes and highlights the role of the individual within social systems. With her work, she breaks with stereotypical perceptions and prejudices and as a result she enables new perspectives on many areas of our life.

The exhibition Radical Beauty at the Drawing Room shows works arising from actions with people in existential spaces, based on three themes (military, human trafficking and deprived social areas). In the context of a long-term collaboration with the German Armed Forces, for example, the artist had soldiers fire at glass frames on command. Four of the resulting works will be shown under the title of DIRTY MINIMAL #33.2.20-23 – BULLET ACTION PAINTING/MACHINE GUN. Linde’s media-reflexive works demonstrate her interest in sociological-political contexts and present a form of art that has a social and hence political core as its goal. This never appears shallow, illustrative or merely anecdotal but remains hard, radical and indigestible in its beauty. (cf. the explanatory statement for the award presented to Almut Linde by the Hamburg Kunstbeutelträger 2016).
Translation: Gillian Morris, Berlin