Katharina Jahnke

"haunted"

preview Friday, May 21, 2004, 7pm - 9pm
exhibition May 22 - July 3, 2004
opening hours Wed - Sat 11am - 6pm


Galerie Kamm is pleased to present the Cologne artist Katharina Jahnke with a solo exhibition in the gallery. Katharina Jahnke works in different media with myths and phenomena of pop and trivia, and enquires into their social relevance. The whole installation of the exhibition “haunted” circles around the theme of fear, which is described using a constellation of quotations and images. At the centre of the exhibition is the house as a place for the projection of fear.

With the drawing series “hollywood hauntings” Katharina Jahnke investigates the formation of legends and our projections on the villas of Hollywood stars, as examples of the creation of fear and its mechanisms. The overlapping of fictional nightmares – Hollywood as the exploitation-machine of fears – with the real nightmares of Hollywood stars, is visualized in an almost encyclopaedic presentation of her investigations.
A further part of the exhibition is a collection of model “haunted houses”. The rudimentary constructions from scraps of wood and glass bricks, though not directly quoting the common cliché of a haunted house, describe a range of visual quotations of elements of disturbance: alienated, distorted views; shattered windows describe the home as a place that has lost its usual function of being a protective space.
The third part of the exhibition is made up of banners on which the names of different types of fear have been embroidered. These names were taken from a list of over 400 scientifically recognized phobias. The list inevitably provokes the question, why is one searching for this particular fear.

Katharina Jahnke’s work is directed at the mechanisms of fear as well as at their function in societies where the permanent struggle for survival has been defeated and the cultivation of fear has become a “luxury”.