Christiane Baumgartner: Speed/Standstill
04.09.03 – 04.10.03
Domo Baal presents Christiane Baumgartner's first UK solo show: Speed/Standstill, following her two solo exhibitions in Leipzig and Oslo earlier this year. This substantial exhibition will showcase 7 new monumental woodcuts printed on handmade Japanese Kozo paper as well as a selection of artist's books and other editioned work.
At the heart of Baumgartner's work is the experience of speed and that of its deliberate pausing, with particular reference to cars, airplanes and wind turbines. She selects stills from her own video footage and transposes them, laboriously cutting into large wood plates. The juxtaposition of film as the fastest and latest reproduction technique and woodcut as the slowest and earliest, is a prime concern in the work. Rigorously limiting herself to the graphic language of horizontal black and white lines she transforms power, force and speed into a delicate beauty, which is further enhanced by printing by hand onto custom made handmade paper.
The artist's vocabulary is strictly limited to the black and white lines that would normally irritate the eye when seen in a low definition freeze-framed image. Incised with precision, and on a large scale, these lines challenge the viewer to confront the perception of his own perspective. "She fixes the state of being unfixed." Anne Hamlyn in: Christiane Baumgartner, Speed/Standstill, Leipzig: Carivari 2003, p. 30. The menacing presence suggested by the choice of these particular machines as motifs is palpable.
Christiane Baumgartner lives and works in Leipzig. Following her studies in Leipzig at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst she took her MA at the Royal College of Art in 1999 under the DAAD scheme. Her work consists of video, artist books and woodcuts. In 2000 she won the prize at the International Triennal of Original Graphic Prints in Grenchen, Switzerland. Last year she was selected for the annual "Leipziger Jahresausstellung" for which she also won the prize. Her work is held in public and private collections i n the UK, Holland, Germany and Switzerland. The Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig will exhibit her largest and most recent woodcut 'Transall' in their newly commissioned building due to open to the public in 2004.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a bi–lingual catalogue of 60 pages in full colour.