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C-Space
Red No.1 - C1 & C2,
Cao Changdi Chaoyang District,
Beijing 100015, China   map * 
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Uncertain Ends
by C-Space
Location: C-space
Artist(s): Kathrin SCHLEGEL
Date: 24 Sep - 24 Oct 2011

Kathrin Schlegel conceived her site-specific installation "Uncertain Ends" specifically for C-Space, using (1)999 white perfume lily's. According to Chinese numerology 9 being a special number referring to all good things lasting. the lily's float under the ceiling of the gallery forming their own sky.

The lily (百合, bǎi hé) is said to help a person forget his troubles and symbolizes eternal love. A sky of white lily's seems to levitate in the space at a height of 4 meter. The hanging garden, probably referring to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient (Western) World or to the Christian flower iconography where the lily is a symbol of purity connected to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, turns the space into a cathedralesque metaspace with a sacral feeling - giving a radiation of high inner spiritualization. A cloud of unbearable beauty surrounded by frail haze. Following one of the essential doctrines or three marks of existence in Buddhism, the Impermanence, the installation will be in constant state of flux. Whenever one quality reaches its peak, it will naturally begin to transform into the opposite quality. The flowers arise from a bud till prime of life and then fade away. The laws of beauty remain even in times of great distress.

Schlegel´s work departs from her knowledge situated in the site-specific interventions, and develops into a cultural practice through research-oriented and context-related artistic methods. She investigates the potentiality and interactivity of human experience through the medium of art in particular local environments and their everyday spectacles. Her temporary interventions challenge the common perspectives on these locations and events while attempting to produce new sets of (ambiguous) meaning in direct communication with the particular audiences that are being addressed. The investigation of group identities is thus being transformed into an open invitation for social and cultural participation at the stage for production of collective memory, visualisation of social values, and re-articulation of everyday life. Chasing the ephemeral and investigating the impermance of being is a recurrent element in her works. An important issue for her in the decision about the medium is the authentic and honorable treatment of the aura to be found at the intersection of the sacred and profane. Indeed this search for the aura is also the reason that so much of her work has a theatrical flavor.

Kathrin Schlegel mainly works on projects in public space. During a residency in Curacao in 2009 Schlegel developed a concept for a permanent work in public space, at a local cemetary. Last year she has been commissioned to create a permanent sculptural piece for the city of Amersfoort, The Netherlands, which has been installed under a railway bridge. Recently she commissioned a sculpture from stainless steal for the city of Utrecht, The Netherlands, for an existing pedestal whose sculpture had been stolen. The inspiration for the artwork was based on the “absent presence”.

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