STUDIO & CUBE 3/5 — IN THE RACK ROOM #19
NADINE FECHT
TEST RUNS
Preview THU, SEP 29, 6 – 9pm
Open by appointment until OCTOBER 2, 2022
LAGE EGAL [IN THE RACK ROOM]
Liselotte-Herrmann-Str. 26 (HH)
10407 Berlin
For her exhibition entitled TEST RUNS, Fecht continues her series EIGENTUM (ownership), which is dedicated to the ever-increasing problem of social inequality. Nadine Fecht uses the medium of drawing not just as a sketch on paper, but rather as a practice that reaches beyond the surface and thereby symbolically addresses political subjects. In her works presented here, Fecht experiments with paper and fire, finding a balance between control and letting go of control. The drawings are made through torching, which partially destroys the paper and leaves burns and scorch marks on the surface. The works are an artistic process set in motion. The burning fire is uncontrollable; at the same time, the artist directs and stages the action, triggering a play between control and letting go of control. What becomes visible on the paper is the contrast between big and small burn marks, untouched areas and total destruction where the paper is completely destroyed, leaving a wounded hole behind. The emerging lines and marks form boundaries on the paper, which raise questions about ownership. In a playful way, the marks in Fecht’s drawings become symbols for branding and marking one’s property. In doing so, she offers a confrontational and fragile dialogue about ownership and social conditions and their effect on social inequality.
Nadine Fecht (*1976, lives and works in Berlin) began studying free art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe in 1996 and completed it in 2009 as a master student with Stan Douglas and Lothar Baumgarten at the University of the Arts in Berlin. She has received working scholarships from the Akademie der Künste Berlin, the Stiftung Kunstfonds in Bonn (2013) and the two-year Dorothea Erxleben Stipendium in 2015. She recently received the three-month Villa Aurora Fellowship in Los Angeles (former place of exile of Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger). Her work is in public collections at the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Berlinische Galerie and, since 2018, the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig. Most recently, the Kunsthalle Mannheim dedicated a solo exhibition to her in 2019. Her work has also been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Museum Wilhelm Morgner, Soest (2022), Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (2020), Kunsthalle Mannheim (2019), and the Kunstmuseum Basel (2017), the Shedhalle Tübingen (2017) and the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, as well as at the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen.
The curatorial project INTHERACKROOM deals with the artist’s studio as a physical and digital exhibition space. A work of art is unfinished as long as it is in the studio and receives its definitive form only in the exhibition. Five selected artists will explore this process between becoming and being over the next months, from July to November (Jane Garbert, Franz Schmidt, Nadine Fecht, Pierre Granoux and Regine Kolle). The project aims to break the separation between production and exhibition space and to question established forms of presentation. It simultaneously opens up a new perspective on the potential of the studio as a physical and digital exhibition space.
Among all the frames, envelopes, and boundaries — generally unperceived, much less never questioned — that surround and ‘make’ the work of art […] there is one thing that is never spoken of and even more rarely questioned, but which stands first among everything that surrounds and conditions art, namely: the artist’s studio. (Daniel Buren, Function of the Studio, 1970/71)
With the kind support of ARTBUTLER, ARTLAND and BBK BUND / NEUSTART KULTUR:
