Katharina Jahnke

AN ILLUSION CAUSED BY


Opening Friday, July 6, 2007, 6 - 10pm
Exhibition July 7 - September 1, 2007
Opening hours Tue - Sat, 11am - 6pm

Summer break August 7 - 18, 2007


In „an illusion caused by“, the upcoming exhibition by Katharina Jahnke, we see silver tinsel filaments shimmering loftily and grated mirrors reflect. Butterflies decorate a folding screen and drops of glass drip from the ceiling and gather in a puddle of wax.
Katharina Jahnke seduces the viewer by showing him the beautiful and the familiar, but only to obscure and decompose it, leaving behind the question as to how one could have fallen for such delusion. However, it is no abyss, which opens up in front of us. Rather - like a slight headache - the exhibition is pervaded by an insecurity about whether what we see is true or only appears to be.

The installations and drawings by Katharina Jahnke examine the causations of illusions, which mostly anchor in longings, desires and expectations. Written on a folding screen, we can read about Sylvester Stallone's disappointment in view of a dematerialising artwork by Anselm Kiefer, being unable to accept that a work, which is worth millions, can simply loose some of the straws attached to it. The screen is ornamented with a drawing of butterflies. Being an overly used decorative motif, Katharina Jahnke's drawing reiterates it once again. However, the butterflies lose their delicacy and beauty once we discover a bleak and dark corner of the screen from which the insects emerge like harbingers of death.

Yet another room divider is made of mirrors, the backside of which is scratched and has thus become transparent. This scratching gives rise to an incomplete mirror image, which both reflects and lets through. The shape of the see-through areas resembles stars and suddenly the backside becomes perceptible as the forefront. The sight of the stars as one of the greatest illusions is also the subject matter of large-scale drawings of planets that are still visible to the eye but have extinguished long ago. Others are conceived by scientists as possible substitute refuges should the earth perish.
Katharina Jahnke's work ranges from global beliefs to domestic fitments, decorative materials, and adornments used as means to pretend a beautiful and snug world. A floor-piece consisting of tainted plate-glass, on which a broken drinking glass and honeycomb-balls are posed upon, becomes an ever-changing collage as the glass reflects the sky. Once you look beyond the limits of the universe, you come to recognize that „The sun going down is just an illusion caused by the world spinning round“
Flaming Lips