ANNETTE KELM

A small introduction to Kelm’s expansive and varied oeuvre, Objektwahl includes works created between 2017and 2024. Four works from the artist’s small series Jeans Buttons are installed in a grid, emphasizing the works’serieal quality. Depicting the same section of a blue Jeans Jacket, each work features a different constellation ofstatement buttons attached to the front of the garment. From singular „International Women’s Day, 8 March 1975”or „Have a Gay Day” to a cacophony of political causes from distinct time periods, Jeans Buttons bring to mindthe importance of activist gestures in everyday life. The works emphasize the political struggles in lived experience,both as a reference to the fluctuating popularity and the often only episodic progress in advancing political causesbut also as a hopeful gesture of continued belief in the possibility of change.

Still-life with Spring is another characteristic example of Kelm’s idiosyncratic subject matter, bringing togetherinexpensive design objects, both mass produced and crafted, and a bouquet of flowers, all posed before brightblue surfaces. A small coil is seen perched on the table: the „spring” in the work’s title adds a visual pun and in istrecognition, a moment of levity. Behind the economical conjuring of a colorful, yet also unexpectedly meaningful,motif lurks a sense of todays’s living conditions, a cobbled together scene that speaks to the conditions of modernliving in a world of inexpensive design and found objects.

Good Morning and Cola Meise both find beauty and serendipitous humor in everyday objects. The mostrecent work in this presentation, Cola Meise depicts an empty Coca-Cola bottle with a stopper in the shape ofa surprisingly life-like wooden bird against a bright red background that has slight creases creating darker folds.

Awash in red, the work has a playful quality but also approaches near abstraction with its expanse of color. (Itrecalls Joseph Albers’s famous dictum about the subjectivity of color, in effect saying: everyone sees their ownCoca-Cola red.) Good Morning takes as point of departure an unfolded napkin, placing small plastic flowers onand around the item, echoing its repeated, gridded floral motif, and pinning it to board. A dusty black cable cutsacross the seeming sweetness of the subject matter: the electrical cord belongs to the flashlights used for theshoot. The self-referential gesture is at the core of Kelm’s practice whose works are always infused with a deepknowledge of and reflection on the medium of photography and its history.

Annette Kelm was born in 1975 in Stuttgart, Germany. Annette Kelm studied at Hochschule für bildende Künste,Hamburg. She received numerous awards and prizes, among them Camera Austria Prize (2015); Preis derNationalgalerie, Audience Award (2009); and Art Cologne Prize for Young Artists (2005). She lives and works inBerlin.

Annette Kelm’s selected solo exhibitions include: Die Bücher, ICA-Milano, Milan (2022); Die Bücher, BerlinBrandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin (2022); Die Bücher, Kunsthalle zu Kiel (2022); Geld,Deutsche Bundesbank (Federal Bank of Germany), Frankfurt am Main (2020); Annette Kelm, Auswärtiges Amt(Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Berlin (2019); Tomato Target, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2018); Peter and Irene LudwigFoundation, Aachen (2018); Fosun Foundation, Shanghai (2018); Leaves, Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2017);Detroit Affinities, MOCAD, Detroit (2016); Home Home Home, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld (2015); Staub,Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2014); No such Things as History; Four Collections and One Artist,Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, München (2014); Hallo aber, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2011); Annette Kelm,Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich (2009); Annette Kelm, KW – Institute für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Berlin (2009); AnnetteKelm, CCA Wattis, Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2008); Annette Kelm, Witte de With Center forContemporary Art, Rotterdam (2008).

Her work was presented in international biennials and survey exhibitions, among them in Illuminations, 54thInternational Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2011).

The artist’s work is held in the collections of various institutions including: 33 Art Center, Guangzhou; CentrePompidou, Paris; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin; Hamburger Kunsthalle,Hamburg; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-On-Hudson; Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld; Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Halle an der Saale; Kunsthalle zu Kiel;Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart; Lenbachhaus München,Munich; LWL Museum für Kunst und Kultur Münster, Münster; MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles; mumok,Vienna; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art New York, New York; Sammlungzeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Sprengel Museum,Hannover; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Modern, London; Walker ArtCenter Minneapolis, Minneapolis; FRAC Grand Large - Hauts-de-France, Dunkerque; Louis Vuitton Stiftung; andMudam Luxembourg.

For press inquiries please contact David Ulrichs. Tel: +49 (0) 176 50 33 01 35 or david@davidulrichs.com

Press release courtesy Esther Schipper