Kathrin Schiffbauer

geboren 1965 in Essen, lebt und arbeitet in Köln

 

 

Ausbildung
1986 - 87
Accademia di Belle Arti, Rom
1978 - 81
Kunstakademie Münster
1991 - 93
Städelschule, Frankfurt a.M., Raimer Jochims
1994
Diplom, Kunstakademie Münster

Meisterschülerin von Ulrich Erben

 

 

 

 

Stipendien

1987 
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venedig
1994 
Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Maine USA
1996 
Senat für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur, Berlin
2003 
Künstlergut Prösitz
2004 
Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt Art IT

 

 

 

 

 

Ausstellungen

 

2005 
City Rumble, Overgaden- Institut für Gegenwartskunst, Kopenhagen, DK

Raumflucht, Künstlerhaus Dortmund

2004 
Golrdausch
2004
Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin

Modell für Grimma, Klosterkirche Grimma

2003 
U 9 Zwischendeck, permanente Installation mit Zeichnungen

2002 
U 15 Installation, Installation mit Zeichnungen, Kurfürstendamm Berlin
mit Catrin Otto, Jürgen Baumann, Ruudi Beier, NGBK Berlin

Die Ausstellung, Kunsthaus Essen

2001 
Untergrund, Kulturhaus Schöneberg

2000 
andere Umstände, Kulturhaus Schöneberg

1999 
Künstlerische Entwürfe für den U-Bahnhof Alexanderplatz, Berlin
Feuerstreifen, Reservoir V-Pyrotektura, Wasserspeicher Berlin

machs gut Mensch, Zeitschrift Die ZEIT, Kunstverein Schwerte

1998 
Lucy, Menschen im Bad, Stadtbad Neukölln, Berlin

1998 
New Nasuby Gallery, Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Asian Fine Arts Factory, Berlin

Aggregatzustand-simple construction-, Umspannwerk Berlin

1997 
Alpraum, empty rooms e.v., Berlin

1996 
Paintallation, Kabinett Kunsthaus Essen

1995 
Kühlkammer, Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben, Berlin

Vorhang, Städtische Ausstellungshalle am Hawerkamp Münster

Galerie Münsterland Emsdetten

Galerie Forum Alte Werft, Papenburg

1994 
Skowhegan School of Painting, USA

Kunstakademie Münster

1993 
Städelschule Frankfurt

1988 
Spuren, Galerie Kosmos Essen

1988 
Galeria Nuova Internazionale, Rom

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text

 

Kathrin Schiffbauer situates her artistic interventions in peripheral locations.
The sites used are often marginal or neglected spaces. These could be passageways, storage or loading areas. In all cases, the sites have a significant connection to the urban, socio-economic texture of the surrounding area. They often have undergone changes of use. Kathrin Schiffbauer directs the    gaze to spaces off the beaten track, picking apart and exposing their history, finding connotations and even hidden agendas.

 

Kathrin Schiffbauer’s work is always site-specific. The placing, content and form of her work
are intrinsically entwined together, making her interventions the opposite of ‘drop sculptures’. She makes large, three-dimensional drawings to comment upon and alter the public spaces or urban sites, re-working their dense fabric of changes in use and meaning.

 

Kathrin Schiffbauer approaches any chosen location like an archaeologist. She collates past uses, significant tools, and architectural changes. Research into each site’s history and present status yields visual imagery, which is then developed into collages and large-scale models. She describes her mode of working as ‘creating drawings the viewer can walk into’. Architectural features are juxtaposed with cut-out-drawings depicting fictional elements of a location’s past and present use. Traces of human habitation are visible, tools and clothing are strewn about, but the owners seem to have just left.

 

The installations are temporary. The fragility of the materials employed conveys this: they are large cutouts of paper or cardboard, that are drawn upon with broad charcoal- or brushstrokes to show smudge marks and other traces of production. The drawings are mostly black and white, with a focused and sparse use of color. Reduced to their characteristic features, the drawings provide an element of dead-pan humor.

 

The interdependency of actual space and cut-out drawings playfully contradict traditional notions of perception. Kathrin Schiffbauer fuses two seemingly contrary methods for rendering spatial perspective. Actual, ‘real’ space is treated as if it were a flat surface, imposing a law of linear perspective, the focus on a vanishing point; obversely, ‘flat’ drawings are positioned as if they were bodily objects. In addition, the installations employ frequent changes of scale and varying points of view.

 

The cut-out-drawings often depict objects hugely enlarged or shown from a child’s perspective. This multi-dimensional approach contributes to the impression of a three-dimensional scene laid out as in a comic strip. Even so, there is no linear narrative, so any “stories” are created only in the mind of the observer. Kathrin Schiffbauer unfolds each site-specific installation like a stage onto which the observer is invited to step. The space is presented as a storyboard-set, and the viewer is invited to explore a real and simultaneously imaginary site.

 

Hannah Kruse