"FROM GOTH TO BOSS"
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Kunstverein Kaernten, Seitengalerie

Goethepark 1, 9020 Klagenfurt
26. 01. – 24. 02. 2018
FC: Johannes Puch

“Based on a sculptural practice, Céline Struger is exploring the sensual and haptic qualities of material. Surpassing the mere aesthetics of things, she investigates the arrangement of spatial elements amongst each other, the site and the audience.  Referring to Arte Povera, she advocates a democratisation of form and the conscious use of materials such as precious metals, porcelain, found objects and trash. In this way, she points out that the value of goods attributed by society often contradicts their inherent value. She acquires her working material on construction sites and scrapyards or finds it in nature. Céline Struger combines contrasting materials in order to define a setting, which oscillates between balance and imbalance and radiates fragility and imperfection. Therefore, she seeks inspiration in architecture and landscape. In the exhibition at Kunstverein Kärnten Céline Struger is showing ceramics and objects that were created at her artist-in-residencies in Germany and New Zealand.  The geometrical piece “Floor Still Te Uru“, which was initially produced for an exhibition in Auckland, was adapted to the (architectural particularities, note) of the Kuenstlerhaus. Water-filled aluminium trenches reflect the incoming winter light, which the artist picks up with translucent PVC and fluorescent glazes.

„...“  The photograph „Influencer with Nude“ works as an independent artpiece relating to the plant sculpture by the same title „Influencer“, which was on display last summer at the Artist House Wiepersdorf Castle. Their frosted green colour unconsciously defined the choice of the colour setting of the installation up front, in the end the artist included the prickly leaves in the exhibition site. In the photograph she complemented the thistle with a butterfly and a magazine clipping of a male pin-up, that is posted in the background. Céline Struger is consistently collecting images from the internet and magazines, in this very case the image belongs to the German photographer Wolfgang Tillmanns. By setting the focus on the forefront and blurring the paper clipping in the back, she swerves the copyright infringement by a hair's breadth. The artist addresses the German Romanticism, as it is still immanent in Wiepersdorf Castle in a distinguished way, – the subtle tones dominating the photograph, the charming butterfly and the crouching nude are perpetuating the classical aesthetics of this period.”

Nora Leitgeb