Stefanie Busch
www.stefaniebusch.com
In her pictorial documentation »The Good Times Are Killing Me« Stefanie Busch has processed impressions of her stay in America in 2009. As always when she is travelling, she eagerly collected images. In the USA she travelled through the Mid West and found traces of economical decline in many places. Shrinking Cities, abandoned industrial plants, depopulated and run-down residential areas – places of the shady side of the American Way of Life, where not much is happening and where only empty factory buildings and unused bill boards, abandoned to decline and vandalism stand as witnesses of the former prosperity of the middle class. Often, orphaned properties are marked with sighs as vacant. It is either the vague hope that the momentary situation is only temporarily or a sign saying For Sale would be too early or it is a given fact that demolition is following. The notion of emptiness is taking a concrete form here. If the cities lose money also cultural activities are not spared. The maybe most outrageous motif for the European bourgeoisie was found by the artist in the city of Detroit, formerly known for car production where an opera is now used as a car park.
The photographic documentation was completed by Stefanie Busch with news paper articles, maps and research which replenished the experiences there with background information. Later screen prints and ink drawings originated from this material, whereas all picked main motifs – for example a huge billboard, the car park in the opera, the vacant sign – were usually presented as individual images but next beside them frequently appear other motifs in basic or multiple cross-fading. The moment of overlay is pointing towards the desolation of these places in their momentary state, a state which might lead to other, new and maybe also promising developments after some time. In her finished works two images adverse each other, also some of her own photographs. Similar to our memory where images are layered on top of one another, new and old images mix and through permanent adjustment of the unknown and the known, experience and cognition become possible instances – hence Stefanie Busch has placed her sequence of images from America in a steady alternation of proximity and distance. Not by coincidence the viewing of her works is similar to reading a paper, in which one can turn the pages back and forth according to a personal rhythm.
Mathias Wagner · 2011
| Solo Exhibitions (selection) |
2012 | »Überkehr«, galerie baer, Dresden, Germany |
2011 | »so oder so«, Store, Dresden, Germany |
Participations (selection) | |
2013 | »jetzt hier«, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden - Lipsiusbau, Dresden |
2012 | »Versteckte Öffentlichkeiten«, Motorenhalle Dresden, Germany |
2011 | »Für die mit der Sehnsucht«, Kunstraum Peripherie, Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst, Coburg, Germany |
2010 | »Unter Oberflächen«, Delikatessenhaus, Leipzig, Germany |
Vita | |
1977 | born in Dresden, Germany |
1998-2003 | study of painting, graphic arts and new media at the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, Germany |
2003-2005 | master studies with Prof. Lutz Dammbeck at the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden, Germany |
lives and works in Dresden, Gemany | |
Prizes/Grants | |
2009 | Columbus/Ohio fellowship by Freistaates Sachsen |
2008 | Art in architecture project, with Robert Thiele, University Leipzig |
2007 | Sachsen_Art – Prize for Young Printed Art, founded by Dresdner Bank and Neuer Sächsischer Kunstverein |
2006 | prize of the city Dresden for the artist platform „7th floor“, Dresden |
2005 | grant by Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen |
2004 | Hegenbarth-Fellowship Awarded 1st prize at the Kunst-am-Bau-Competition held by the German embassy in Kiev, Ukraine
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2002 | special prize at Pentapark Photo Prize |
Downloads | |
Text | |
»This could be heaven or this could be Hell...« · Petra Lewey · 2009 | |