Birgit Kahle (artist)
Birgit Kahle (* 1957 in Cologne ) is a German artist. Her work focuses on photography in combination with sculpture and room installation . In 1997 she founded the German-Italian art project Lo spirito del Lago together with Peter Gilles and Giampiero Zanzi in Stresa . She has been running the project on her own since 2017, now on Lago d´Orta with the support of the Italian cultural association Asilo Bianco.
life and work
Birgit Kahle studied religion and textile science at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences from 1981 to 1984 , then photography with Arno Jansen . In the early 1980s she began a complex of photographic works that dealt with the “perception of light, the self-portrait, the female body”. During this phase, Kahle created self-portraits on black and white negatives, which were gradually destroyed mechanically in a process. She made photo prints of the individual process steps involved in the destruction, so that large, up to 14 meters long, sometimes larger than life series of images were created.
In 1997 the first room installation with fabric was created in a former, still furnished hotel room. With this installation, Kahle began a period away from the surface and towards the three-dimensional. Other room installations followed, mostly with photographic self-portraits of the body. Kahle increasingly used fabric as a material and also integrated it into her photographic work, for example in Il mistero delle donne (1999), where red velvet swells over a large photo torn in the middle. At the same time, photo series on the subject of still life were created. In the arrangements, based on the Flemish painters of the 16th and 17th centuries, objects from today are mixed; red velvet was always part of the pictures in this work phase. This was followed by the red still lifes; the woman's body covered with velvet served as a carrier for the flowers and fruits, every object was red.
The first sculpture was created in 2010, a lying open cone four meters long and two meters in diameter in the “entrance area”. The height of the object could allow walking into the sculpture. The red velvet inside the sculpture is laid in hundreds of rosette-shaped folds and studded with shards of mirror and small crystals. A large broken mirror inside reflects the head of each viewer. Then smaller sculptures were created using the same technique. In the following canvases, too, light and the body remained the focus of her work. The velvet was combined with crystals and shards of mirrors, sculptures as well as pictures were criss-crossed by suggested ribs and veins. The veins that were previously firmly connected to the sculptures detached themselves from the ground in the following works and became independent elements.
A new phase of work began in summer 2014: Earth Song . Hand-sized sculptures were created from ceramic modeling clay. In the accompanying photographs, the mostly tiny details of the figures were emphasized in large format. Photographs and sculptures thus enter into a “ symbiotic ” relationship. The first bronze sculptures were also created at the beginning of 2017. Birgit Kahle lives and works in Cologne.
Awards
- 1985 Chargesheimer Prize for Photography from the City of Cologne
Exhibitions (selection)
- Galerie Wilde, Cologne 1983 (solo exhibition)
- German Association of Artists , Bremen 1987
- Self , Women's Museum Bonn 1987
- Young Art Forum , Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart 1987
- Zwielicht , Niederrheinischer Kunstverein , Wesel 1989 (solo exhibition)
- German art photography of the 90s , Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn 1994
- Light , Wilhelm-Hack-Museum , Ludwigshafen 1995 (solo exhibition)
- Thought - Memory , Rheinforum, Cologne 1997 (solo exhibition)
- Terra Incognita , Cologne City Museum 1999 (solo exhibition)
- One man show , Lo Spirito del Lago, Art Cologne , Cologne 2001
- Nel Profondo , Chiostro di Voltorre, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea, Varese (IT) 2001
- Nel Profondo , Museum Ratingen 2002
- Confluentes II , Ludwig Museum Koblenz 2002
- Art on prescription , Coll. Kraft, Cologne, Städtisches Museum Zwickau 2003
- Art and taboo , Kraft Coll., Museum Ratingen 2004
- Art and taboo , Berlin Medical History Museum 2004
- The third eye (with Peter Gilles ), Ethnological Collection of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck 2004
- Art and taboo , Siegerlandmuseum , Siegen 2005
- Dance with the Dance of Death, Kraft Coll., Berlin Medical History Museum 2010
- Pimp the Timp , Hotel Timp for the int.Photoszene Cologne, Cologne 2010
- A woman sees red , Galerie NOSTHEIDE-EŸCKE, Düsseldorf 2012 (solo exhibition)
- Cats vs. dogs , Keramion , Frechen 2016
- Preserve culture! Preserve culture? Art gallery Altes Rathaus Fürstenwalde 2018
- ART is always an assertion. COLLECTING too. 50 years of the Kraft Collection, Art Museum Villa Zanders 2019
Works in public and private collections
- Museum Ludwig , Cologne
- Wilhelm Hack Museum , Ludwigshafen
- Cologne City Museum
- Deutschlandfunk / Deutsche Welle , Cologne
- Polaroid Collection
- AXA Insurance , Cologne
Web links
- Homepage Birgit Kahle
- Homepage Lo spirito del Lago
- Homepage of the artist Peter Gilles with photos by Birgit Kahle
- https://www.kuenstlerverzeichnis-koeln.de Entry in the artist directory of the city of Cologne
supporting documents
- ↑ Birgit Kahle (2016). In: spirito-del-lago.de. Retrieved February 9, 2017 .
- ↑ Lo Spirito del Lago - an unusual art project in the middle of Europe. In: spirito-del-lago.de. Retrieved February 9, 2017 .
- ↑ Lo Spirito del Lago - an extraordinary art project in the heart of Europe - Spirito del Lago. Accessed on November 14, 2019 (German).
- ↑ a b c d e Rhenish style: A woman sees red. Birgit Kahle in the Nostheide-Eÿcke gallery. In: rheinische-art.de. rheinische ART, November 2012, accessed on February 9, 2017 .
- ↑ Hartmut Kraft: Lo Spirito del Lago. Isola Bella. 1997-2006 . Salon Verlag, Cologne 2006.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kahle, Birgit |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1957 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cologne |