Galerie Hubert Winter

Birgit Jürgenssen
Body Projections from the 1980s
15. January – 6. March 2010
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Die Antwort steht in den Sternen geschrieben.
Die letzten Zeilen. In: Philippe Soupault, Der Neger. Dt. v. Ré Soupault. Ffm, Suhrkamp, 1967.

After the early death of Birgit Jürgenssen in 2003 the gallery tries to give in cooperation with the estate of the artist who is reworking her complex oeuvre since 3 years an annual insight into it. The series Body Projections contains over 60 photos originated in the 1980s. Some single works had been shown before but this exhibition will be the first opportunity for the public to see the richness of this body of work.

Abigail Solomon-Godeau writes about the Body Projections:
"In works such as her Körperprojektionen (Body Projections) of 1987/88, she employed slides made from her drawings of from appropriated images of objects. These were then projected upon the surface of her body, transformed into still photographs, of into projections. In their material specificity, the Körperprojektionen remind us that the body is a site – and of course, a “sight” – of projection, as well as the site of inscription, culturally no less than psychically.“

To quote Anselm Haverkamp


“a construct of the pictorial space, that runs paradoxical aground the presentation surface.” The Body Projections are at the same time intellectual documents, comparable to a declining film strip. Some of them as Abigail Solomon-Godeau writes in her essay on Birgit Jürgenssen, have a highly subversive deeper meaning (for example vessels and vase forms for the long iconography of femininity.) Most of the time they involve a psychological penetration, hidden quotes and intellectual stimulating modifications and variations, that stripe the lines on irony and persiflage signalising “sophistication”. The art of Birgit Jürgenssen does not only approach the mind of the viewer in a virtuoso manner of the transformation of forms, but also her intellect and her skills of ironical changes of patterns and allusions show off.

We recommend “ Birgit Jürgenssen” published by Gabriele Schor and Abigail Solomon-Godeau with essays by Elisabeth Bronfen, Sigrid Schade, Gabriele Schor, Abigail Solomon-Godeau and Geraldine Spiekermann (Hatje-Cantz in cooperation with the collection Sammlung Verbund)