Katrin Korfmann - 665 km

About

BERLINARTPROJECTS is proud to present artworks by Katrin Korfmann in her first solo exhibition at the gallery. Referring to the distance between Korfmann's studio in Amsterdam and her former hometown Berlin, the title sets the tone for the show – that of travel, of journey. And this on multiple levels, for the artist’s work in itself involves a compression of time and space whilst the pieces on show span approximately 15 years and were produced in two different cities. 

Fittingly perhaps, the exhibition starts with Berlin, with analogue images taken with a plate camera of the city’s firewalls and named after the streets they were shot in. Interested in their status as non-spaces, Korfmann made a study of these so-called “Brandmauern” – structures built for the public good, but invisible to most citizens. Yet this is not a chronological tour through Korfmann’s oeuvre, instead we see a dynamic exchange between works from different years developing, works that were created in two distinct cities. Korfmann’s trademark synthesis of different temporal and spatial dimensions in artistic form, is most pronounced in her ultrachrome prints from the series Count for Nothing. The artist’s photographs mostly take a bird’s eye perspective on busy urban scenes, merging several images taken over a given time span to create bustling, energetic portrayals of contemporary life. Figures are blurred through movement, or stand static reading in the street, birds fly into the frame from different and impossible angles, capturing a sense of simultaneity, of time frozen yet slipping away all too quickly. 

An archive of incidental traces and irretrievable memory, Korfmann’s works present a specific length of time – ranging from a few minutes through to an entire day – from multiple perspectives, fixing a vast array of moments through still photography without losing any of their transience and momentum. Her art is indeed more of a journey than a destination, constantly morphing and changing as you contemplate it, condensing disparate spaces and times into succinct statements of artistic intent.