Installation, Photography, Objects
In the continuous stream of beginnings and endings, Verónica Lehner, Juli Schmidt, and Hyejeong Yoo address the constant changes that affect the body through time and surroundings in photographs, objects, and interactive sculptures. They negotiate the mostly invisible moments of change that have a lasting effect, and at the same time the visible, brief moments of intimacy that are permanently inscribed in our skin.
The skin is a sensual, resistant, and also vulnerable organ. With it, we perceive touch. On it, we show our emotions and wounds. It is a space of remembrance and preservation and testifies to collective archival practices and mental upheavals. It is any surface, through which the body and world touch, and is simultaneously a form of separation and connection. Skin envelopes and protects, delimits and hides, while at the same time revealing and showing. These contradictory and ambivalent qualities of skin are artistically negotiated within the framework of the exhibition.
Verónica Lehner’s sculptures oscillate between painting and sculpture. The painting becomes something spatial, loses its supposed two dimensionality and becomes a body in its own right that enters into a relationship with the architecture in the space and the bodies within it. In addition to the color, the materiality of the paint itself is key. Over time, the materially active installation Unsettling Attachments (2023) will change due to the effects of time and gravity: it will move further, towards the floor,
expand and change its shape under the influence of heat and cold, thereby obtaining an organic character. Reminiscent of a cocoon, it becomes a changing membrane that leaves the exhibition space in a different state than when it entered.
Juli Schmidt’s works consider the physical limitations of bodies as well as the sensual perceptions that inscribes themselves in the skin as traces of memories. The supposed exterior finds its way in the so-called interior of the body, and vice versa. The skin becomes a membrane that is porous in both directions and through which outer and inner reality meet and mutually influence one other. Through the material wax this permeability becomes almost tangible. Juli Schmidt puts our perception to the test.
She questions conventional ways of looking at skin, cover, and protection and reinterprets them. Through displacements, concealments, and overlappings, Schmidt enables a permanently shifting perspective that explodes the limitations of the body for a brief moment
In the photographic series Carrying, Caring (2022) Hyejeong Yoo embarks on a search for the meaning of the self. Where and when does the I begin and when does it end? How does it relate to the other in general and to the figure of the mother in particular? Hyejeong Yoo pursues this ambivalence between being one and two separate selves,which changes over the course of a life. Who holds and who is held?Who touches and who is touched? For Hyejeong Yoo, bodies are always also a part of passing time. They change their states of being and roles with regard to care within family and social structures.
VERÓNICA LEHNER (*1980 Cali) holds an MA in Spatial Strategies from the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee and a BFA in Fine Arts from the University of Los
Andes in Bogotá. Her work is a constant exploration of spaces, processes and materialities. Recently she has been experimenting with the performativity of color, responding to the specific architectural elements and materials of the respective exhibition space. www.veronicalehner.info
JULI SCHMIDT (*1986) lives and works in Berlin and graduated with a diploma in photography from the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig in 2022. In her photographs, objects and videos, she deals with the body, its definitions, fluid boundaries and fragile materiality. www.julischmidt.de
HYEJEONG YOO (*1992 in Seoul) lives and works in Leipzig. After receiving her Bachelor’s Degree in Photography from Chung-Ang University, she graduated in 2022 with a Diploma in Photography at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig. Her works, which she stages in a performative approach, open a dialogue surrounding the concept of birth and death, presence and absence. www.hyejeongyoo.de
the continuous stream of beginnings and endings (5.3.-14.4.23) takes place in the frame of the exhibition SKIN – Membrane, Organ, Archive (10.2.-7.5.23 at ZAK – Zentrum für Aktuelle Kunst / Zitadelle Spandau) in cooperation with the Frauenmuseum Berlin e.V. and alpha nova & galerie futura.
