Exhibitions

You You

Claudia Kapp
25.11.2011 - 29.01.2012
  • The photo shows the facade of the Edith Russ House with the banner for the exhibition Claudia Kapp: You You. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
    Claudia Kapp: You You. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
  • The photo shows the upper floor of the Edith Russ House with the artwork by Claudia Kapp: Rising Set (The Dark Hours of the Sun). Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
    Claudia Kapp: Rising Set (The Dark Hours of the Sun). Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
  • The photo shows the upper floor of the Edith Russ House with the artwork by Claudia Kapp: Rising Set (The Dark Hours of the Sun). Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
    Claudia Kapp: Rising Set (The Dark Hours of the Sun). Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
  • The photo shows the upper floor of the Edith Russ House with the artwork by Claudia Kapp: Rising Set (The Dark Hours of the Sun). Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
    Claudia Kapp: Rising Set (The Dark Hours of the Sun). Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
  • The photo shows the basement of the Edith Russ House with the artwork by Claudia Kapp: Salutations to That. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
    Claudia Kapp: Salutations to That. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
  • The photo shows the basement of the Edith Russ House with the artwork by Claudia Kapp: Closer. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
    Claudia Kapp: Closer. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
  • The photo shows the basement of the Edith Russ House with the artwork by Claudia Kapp: Closer. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
    Claudia Kapp: Closer. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
  • The photo shows the basement of the Edith Russ House with the artwork by Claudia Kapp: Celebration. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
    Claudia Kapp: Celebration. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
  • The photo shows the basement of the Edith Russ House with the artwork by Claudia Kapp: Celebration. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
    Claudia Kapp: Celebration. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
  • The photo shows the basment of the Edith Russ House with the Exhibition view Claudia Kapp: You You. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
    Exhibition view Claudia Kapp: You You. Photo Franz J Wamhof © Edith-Russ-Haus
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On the occasion of the New York Fellowship of Lower Saxony Savings Bank Foundation and the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture, the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art presents 2010 prizewinner, Claudia Kapp (b.1974 in Freiburg, living in Berlin). The scholarship, initiated in 1999 by the state of Lower Saxony and presented since 2005 together with the Lower Saxony Savings Bank Foundation, consists of a twelve-month stay in the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York and two exhibitions in Lower Saxony art associations.

The neon sign on the roof of the Edith-Russ-Haus, which reads YOUYOU, was inspired by a photograph that Claudia Kapp took in Upstate New York. It introduced the theme for the previous presentation at the Kunstverein Braunschweig. Now the sign, with its dual fluorescent colors, glows at the Edith-Russ-Haus in the colors of a perpetual dawn. The span of the sun’s course rises and sets over the two sites, the two-fold doubling of the content YOUYOU in essence bracketing them. At the Edith-Russ-Haus the sun, which can be seen setting in Braunschweig, rises in a five-channel video-installation. If you enter the first floor, you cannot avoid paying homage to the wave-like rising sons, as a figure in silhouette.

The work Closer raises the question about the true shape of things and their image: In this work, the image of bottles on a rotating turntable, filmed and heavily overexposed, is played back in a projection. This generates an abstract, poetic, perpetually circling motion of red-yellow-blue elements. The image of the dog in the video work, “Dann kannst du mir die Seele nehmen,”  seems to behave in a similarly unreal manner, searching and driven, running to and fro behind a hedge. Other works in the basement take on questions of meaning and illuminate the central theme, the „Pursuit of Happiness,“ sometimes in a slapstick manner or in the form of numerous interviews and slides. For example, the video work Winslet–Ryder–Watts reflects aspects of the pursuit of happiness in an interview with an ambitious and unrealistic script author whom Claudia Kapp meets on a beach.

The dreams dealt with and represented in these works sometimes express a deep melancholy but also the clear belief in making dreams come true. With Celebration, a light and music installation designed for the basement and that can be heard in all parts of the exhibition, the central motif of the sunrise, which the neon YOUYOU sign shows just as much as the video installation in the upper space, is reflected through color and interpreted acoustically as an optimistic, positive view of life. The lines from Sally Oldfield’s song of the same name are elevated to become the presentation’s motto: "...Come on you gotta let it begin, You gotta let your life win, You got nothing more to lose. Hey! Hey! Come on!"

Publication

Funded by

Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur
Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung