Illusionary Observations

Featuring the photographic work of three international artists of different generations, Daniela Comani, Kata Geibl and Sanna Kannisto – the exhibition presents concepts that reference empirical, academic or scientific models for the representation of existential contexts while transferring these into individual, poetic-illusionist pictorial worlds.

In many of her conceptual series, Italian artist Daniela Comani (*1965 Bologna) has created a humorous yet subtle critical artistic contribution to the gender debate by exchanging the respective original gender assignations. In her ongoing project A happy Marriage (since 2003), in which she appears in everyday situations as both a man and a woman, the artist playfully addresses concepts representing feminity and masculinity exposing connotations of attributed gestures and behaviour in a detailed and subtle way.

In her Sisyphus group of work, which, as part of the exhibition in Braunschweig will be shown in Germany for the first time, Kata Geibl (*1989 Budapest) concerns herself with the discrepancy between the rational trust in science and the redefinition of the limits of our knowledge of existential relationships, which tends to result from each scientific success or discovery. Like Sisyphus, who, in Greek mythology, was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill only for it to subsequently roll back down, scientific research also seems to be constantly faced with new existential mysteries.

Curated by Barbara Hofmann-Johnson