BETTINA POUSTTCHI

Bettina Pousttchi is showing new sculptures from her series Vertical Highways at Buchmann Box, which she originally developed and presented for the first time at her survey exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art in Berlin. The new works in Buchmann Box represent a further development of these works. They have their starting point in the artist’s examination of ordering structures that exist in public space.

For several years Pousttchi has been creating sculptures from street objects, such as bollards, crowd barriers, and tree protection barriers that regulate movement in urban space. The artist mechanically refigures these into serial sculptures that relate to the human body. In her latest series, she turns to crash barriers as her starting material. The vertical positioning of the crash barriers, normally used horizontally, creates an unusual perception of space, intensified by the objects’ vivid color.

In the sequential use of the starting object lies a conceptual connection to Minimal Art as well as a reference to Duchamp’s readymades. Pousttchi works with sculpture and photography, often on an architectural scale. Her site- specific photo installations occupy entire buildings, such as the recent installation Berlin Window on the façade of the Berlinische Galerie.

Bettina Pousttchi had numerous solo exhibitions in international institutions like the Arts Club of Chicago, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., Nasher Sculpture Center Dallas, Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, Kunsthalle Basel. In Germany her work was exhibited at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, dem Neuen Museum Nürnberg, Kunsthalle Mainz and recently at KINDL Berlin and the Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art. A comprehensive catalogue has been published on this occasion with essays by Jörg Heiser, Thomas Köhler, Jeremy Strick and Melissa Ho.