Susanne Kriemann

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Susanne Kriemann (* 1972 in Erlangen ) is a German artist and professor. Her work is characterized by the examination of the medium of photography in a socio-historical and archival context and has been exhibited at the Fotomuseum Winterthur , the Berlinische Galerie and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

life and work

After completing her art studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts , Stuttgart, in 1997, where she was taught by Joseph Kosuth and Joan Jonas , Susanne Kriemann took part in the 2000 program de recherche at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris . The artist has participated in various artist-in-residence programs, including in Moscow, Stockholm, Cairo and Vienna. Together with Aleksander Komarov, she founded the artist initiative AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz . She is represented by the galleries Wilfried Lentz and RaebervonStenglin (2009–2016).

Susanne Kriemann's artistic practice is characterized by an expanded concept of photography. Recording is examined as a photographic principle under the aspects of temporality and material processuality within specific socio-historical contexts. Her working methods range from research in archives and field research to the application of various photographic recording and printing processes.

The ongoing work Pechblende (since 2014) deals with the mining of the mineral uraninite for uranium extraction in the years 1946–1991 by SDAG Wismut in the Ore Mountains in the GDR. This had contributed significantly to the nuclear armament of the USSR . The radiation of the mineral has the property of exposing photosensitive paper upon direct contact. In this way a series of autoradiographs was created in which the mineral itself became a kind of "camera".

As a further development, the work Falsche Kamille, Wilde Möhre, Bitterkraut (2016) was created. The title names three plant species that grow on the former site of the SDAG Wismut, which has been considered contaminated for 100,000 years. Kriemann produced photograms (cycle 1) and heliogravures (cycle 2) of them in two cycles . For cycle 1, she dried some of these plants in order to produce photograms of them with the flash of her smartphone in the darkroom and then process them into pigments. These served as the printing ink for associated color fields and a list of raw materials found in the respective plants, including gadolinium , uranium , aluminum , copper , nickel and zinc , which are used in the production of smartphones, camera lenses and LEDs . For cycle 2, she photographed plants on the site and then made heliogravures with the pigments of the respective plants. The subject matter and the image material thus coincide.

The work Duskdust (2014-2016) follows a similar principle , a series of screen prints from a disused limestone mine on the Furillen peninsula in Gotland , Sweden, from which some rocks were removed and ground into a pigment in order to produce the photographed material itself to make the image carrier.

The work Ray (2013) marks a new phase in dealing with the world as an analogue to photography, in the sense of a “recorder” of ecological processes triggered by humans. Ray is dealing with radioactive rare earths , which are essential today for the production of smartphones and LED lights. In the late 1880s, they were extensively explored in Lake Buchanan at the Barringer Hill Mine in Llano, Texas . As part of a research trip in 2013, Kriemann explored the lake on the bottom of which the rare earths are stored from the point of view of its photographic system as an optical lens for the mine below, in which the sunlight breaks.

While the mine is understood here in terms of a material archeology of ecological, economic, political and chemical processes, Kriemann dealt with actual archaeological excavation sites in Ashes and broken brickwork of a logical theory (2009–2010). Photos from the photographic archive of the writer Agatha Christie are juxtaposed with photos and aerial photos by Susanne Kriemann of the Syrian desert and excavation sites in Mesopotamia . As a photographer for the British Museum , Agatha Christie took part in archaeological excursions in northern Iraq in 1928 and in Syria in 1930 - stays that also served as inspiration for novels such as Murder on the Orient Express . At that time, the archaeologists were no longer just concerned with making spectacular finds, but with classifying the small-scale excavation pieces and putting them together to form a conclusive picture of the past. At the same time, there were violent anti-colonial clashes on site at the time of the excavations, with sometimes bloody consequences. Through the collection of historical pictures and recordings by Kriemann, which were presented in an artist book and three exhibitions at KIOSK, Gent, the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart and the Berlinische Galerie, historical documents are brought into a new system of order and thus also the construction of history under the aspect of colonial rule over historiography.

The starting point for her work One Time One Million (2006–2009) is a Ross HK7 Hasselblad camera from 1942, which Kriemann and associated old films from the 1940s bought at an auction during a research visit to Stockholm. Victor Hasselblad developed this model for the Swedish Army based on a German aerial surveillance camera in 1940. With the historical equipment, Kriemann took helicopter photos of the Tensta and Rinkeby settlements on the outskirts of Stockholm, which created space for a million people as a “ million people program ” during the period of housing shortages in 1964–1974 and has now become a place of global migration. In an installation and an artist book published by Roma Publications , she contrasts these recordings with ornithological photographs by Victor Hasselblad from the archive of the Hasselblad Foundation and recordings of military aircraft from the Swedish military archive.

The title of the installation and the artist's book 12 650 000 (2005–2008) refers to the weight in kilograms of the heavy load body built in Berlin from 1940–1941 , which the architect Albert Speer used as a test body for a gigantic triumphal arch that served as the south gate for the von Adolf Hitler conceived " World Capital Germania " was planned. Kriemann countered the massiveness of this historical document with photographic and written archive material from the press, which since 1950 has attempted to grasp the material existence of the heavy pollution body with partly deviating results.

Kriemann's method of integrating archival material into her work and examining the technical requirements for the production of photography follows the question of who is the initiator of photographs and under what historical conditions they are created. Her approach to photography is less about depicting, but more about an interest in photography as a technical tool for the development of history.

In addition to international exhibitions in cities such as Basel, Toronto, Shanghai, Vienna, Vancouver, Paris and Rotterdam, sixteen artist books have been created as multiples since 1998. These are to be understood as an integral part of Susanne Kriemann's work and are created in close collaboration with the designers and authors. As a location-independent, available archive, they transfer the work into a different format, which the artist describes as a dark chamber that exposes the pages when they are opened and flipped through.

Susanne Kriemann has been Professor of Artistic Photography at the State University of Design in Karlsruhe since 2017 . She lives and works in Berlin and Karlsruhe.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 2018: Canopy Canopy, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, USA.
  • 2017: Dyeing untill the water runs clean , Kunstforum Baloise, Basel, CH.
  • 2013: Modeling (Construction School) , Arnolfini , Bristol, UK; Het Licht, RaebervonStenglin, Zurich, CH.
  • 2012: Everything was soulful and all souls were one , Wilfried Lentz, Rotterdam, NL; Het Licht , KASK, De Zwarte Zaal Gent, BE; Cold Time , Kunstverein Braunschweig , Braunschweig, D.
  • 2011: A Silent Crazy Jungle Under Glass , Kunsthalle Winterthur , Winterthur, CH.
  • 2010: Ashes and broken brickwork of a logical theory , RaebervonStenglin, Zurich, CH, Berlinische Galerie , Berlin, D, KIOSK, Gent, BE.
  • 2009: One Time One Million (Migratory Birds Romantic Capitalism) , Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, NL.
  • 2007: The originality of the avant-garde and other modernist myths , Projectstudio, Berlin, Germany.
  • 2004: TCM - The Quiet American , Städtische Galerie Erlangen , Erlangen, Germany.

Scholarships

  • 2015: Work and research grant for fine arts from the Berlin Senate 2015
  • 2012: Working grant for fine arts from the Berlin Senate 2012
  • 2010: GASAG Art Prize '10, Berlin
  • 2009: Prize of the Erlangen Art Foundation

Publications (selection)

  • Hilke Wagner, Axel Wieder (eds.): Susanne Kriemann. Sternberg Press, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-943365-69-6 .
  • Susanne Kriemann: Reading. Sternberg Pres, Berlin, 2011, ISBN 978-1-934105-49-8 .
  • Susanne Kriemann: ONE DAY. Witte de With Publishers, Rotterdam, 2010, ISBN 978-90-73362-95-6 .
  • Susanne Kriemann: Ashes and Broken Brickwork of a Logical Theory. Roma Publications, Amsterdam, 2010, ISBN 978-90-77459-44-7 .
  • Susanne Kriemann: Thomas Köhler (et al.), Susanne Kriemann. Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86678-466-6 .
  • Susanne Kriemann: One Time One Million. Roma Publications, Amsterdam, ISBN 978-90-77459-35-5 .
  • Susanne Kriemann: 12650. A Prior Magazine, Bruxelles, 2008.
  • Susanne Kriemann: Not Quite Repilca. Rotterdam, 2006, ISBN 90-810795-1-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Axel John Wieder: Susanne Kriemann: Ashes and Broken Brickwork of a Logical Theory . 2010.
  2. ↑ a b Senate Department for Culture and Europe (search function). berlin.de, accessed on September 12, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Kriemann, Susanne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist and professor
DATE OF BIRTH 1972
PLACE OF BIRTH gain