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[20210629]
WINDOW SHOPPING by EVA BERENDES and ALEXANDRA LEYKAUF at KUNSTVEREIN SIEGEN curated by JENNIFER CIERLITZA [from 20210518 to 20210717]
[Photos: Heinrich Holtgreve]
The term window shopping refers to the act of looking at a shop window or a display case. Viewers put themselves in the pictorial still life behind the pane and imagine the use of goods and products – irrespective of an immediate purchase intention.
The simultaneity of „viewing" and „using" is more evident in English term than in the German ex-pression "Schaufensterbummel". The latter describes the act of "virtual shopping" less as a conflict between fantasy and reality, but rather as a choreography of movements of walking slowly, strol-ling, and repeatedly lingering in front of the window displays.
In the exhibition "Window Shopping", the artists Eva Berendes and Alexandra Leykauf enter into a dialogue. Both of the above-described forms of looking at window displays are related to the works on display and are understood by the artists in relation to the viewing of pictures or paintings in a more general sense: Objects and arrangements are presented in pictures and yet they remain beyond our reach.
Through sculpture, wall-based works, and site-specific interventions, the artists allude to contexts of consumption and interaction. They make architectural elements a theme of transition from the out-side to the inside in their artworks and guide visitors visitors through doors, gates, windows, and across thresholds into and through the exhibition -- into another (consumer) world.
Eva Berendes attends to the form of abstract painting in the broadest sense. Her approach is charac-terized by thinking through purely abstract forms visible in the manifold areas that border on decor, display, furniture design, and urban infrastructure.The artist has studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, the HdK (UdK) Berlin and Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. She has ex-hibited her work in galleries and institutions such as Hara Museum, Tokyo; CRG Gallery, New York; Witte de With, Rotterdam, Daimler Collection Berlin, S1 Artspace, Sheffleld and de Vleeshal, Middelburg. She has received grants from the DAAD, the Art Fund Foundation and the Pollock Krasner Foundation and has most recently been awarded the Bonner Kunstpreis 2021.
In Alexandra Leykauf's works, the investigation of pictorial spaces is a recurring theme. The con-flict between the illusionary dimension and the striving for a rational deconstruction of images mo-tivates her work. Leykauf studied at the Academy of Fine arts in Nuremberg and at the Gerrit Riet-veld Academie in Amsterdam. Exhibitions took place e.g. at Focal Point Gallery Southend, GAK, Bremen, Center Pompidou, Paris, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Müns-ter, Musée régional d'art contemporain Languedoc-Roussillon, KunstWerke, Berlin, Wiels, Brussels, and Forum Expanded, Berlinale, Berlin. She has received scholarships, among others, from the Art Fund Foundation, the British Arts Council and the Akademie Schloss Solitude
[Text: Jennifer Cierlitza]
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