Kerstin Kartscher
Galerie Karin Guenther, Hamburg, Germany
Kerstin Kartscher, The pools are fed (2010)
‘Still Point’, the title of Kerstin Kartscher’s current exhibition at Galerie Karin Guenther, may be a coded reference to the fact that the exhibition is focused almost entirely on the act of drawing. Kartscher’s work has always been graphic, if not ink-obsessed, but the three-dimensional assemblages that have been the focal point of many of her previous shows have receded into the background here, both literally and figuratively. Even without the encompassing installations, Kartscher’s paintings inhabit the space of the wall differently from framed works. Her pieces are often simply lengths of canvas or textile tacked to the wall or hung from recycled wooden molding, drawn, painted or sprayed on, yielding a raw and immediate aesthetic.
Saint Jerome Garden (2010)
The centrepiece of ‘Still Point’, a large assemblage entitled Saint Jerome Garden (all works 2010), is still predominantly a painting. Planting itself firmly in the realm of nostalgia, the installation consists of a painted wall-hanging beside a chain-link fence precariously propped up by a pole topped by a ratty lampshade. The painting’s imagery reaffirms the ‘old curiosity shop’ quality of the piece: an appropriated image of a woman gardening in Victorian garb is framed by various architectural elements. In Saint Jerome Garden the mixture of pseudo-Millet with rough urban elements, both painted and physically present, reinforce the subtext of loss – a fitting theme for a city that is currently fighting its own battles with the forces of gentrification.
Kartscher returns again and again in her drawings/paintings to the play between interior and exterior and the tension between soft and hard – played out most often between organic and architectural forms. She chooses particular materials and compositions to emphasize the ambivalence of the works in this show. Her riskiest choice is her signature gesture to consistently recast the paintings on canvas as wall-hangings. At times they enter the domain of window shades, curtains and tapestries, becoming a part of a domestic vocabulary. Unfortunately, sometimes the works are more reminiscent of wall calendars and this gesture distracts from the precise and engaging imagery.
Kartscher manipulates both precise and arbitrary imagery so that her works resemble philosophical diagrams rather than surrealistic landscapes. In The House Fits Her Like a Glove, she draws teleological connections between disparate elements to lend a careful rationale to the imagery. In the foreground, gloves on a pair of hands unravel into a set of power lines on which birds are perched, lending a visual intuit to the Brutalist architecture, streetlamp and trees in the background. These connections are repeated often and to great effect throughout the show, and the seemingly random overlapping of forms weaves an almost legible narrative of signs and symbols relating to domestic interiors, organic forms, and bleak exterior details from gardens and cityscapes. In Being an End in Itself, foil appliqués become pulleys that circulate the symbolism within the piece, while in The Pools are Fed, the typical accoutrements of a boudoir table – flowers, vases and perfume bottles – dissolve into similarly shaped chandeliers and traffic stauncheons, which then coalesce into a fountain and pool in the distance.
Consistent with Kartscher’s previous work, the most salient aspect of ‘Still Point’ is the irreconcilable panoply of borrowed images and patterns superficially reminiscent of 19th-century etchings. They are inky and busy, arcane and authoritative – yet profoundly unhinged. Both through the novel accumulations of disparate objects and the framing of the works themselves as semi-tattered wall-hangings and assemblages, Kartscher achieves a gentle bridging of seemingly harmless domestic settings and the nostalgic pastoral with the tortured interior monologue of a necromancer’s prophetic chart.
William Corwin
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