Preview: Thursday, 1 October 2009

Exhibition Run: 2 October 2009 - Sunday 8 November 2009

Curated by Michelle Cotton

In 1907 Wenzel Hablik approached a timber merchant holidaying in the German archipelago of Helgoland and offered to decorate his kite.  The merchant would become Hablik’s patron commissioning him to redesign the entire interior of his 19th century home including wall panels, floorboards, window frames, furniture, furnishings and paintings for the walls.

Kalin Lindena’s abstract figures and architectural constructions are informed by such applications of art towards a total scheme of design. Found objects are incorporated within assemblages fashioned from traditional sculptural materials. Rough-hewn fragments of textiles, wood, metal, glass or stone are combined with mass produced articles that evidence industrial processes and their foundation in science and technology. Lindena’s work conjoins spheres of consumption and production. Her objects are configured with reference to the histories of art, craft and design, working within these traditions and alluding to existing cultural forms and their social, economic and ideological heritage.

Lindena’s work is embedded with ideas, anecdotes and images. Her figurative ‘extra’ sculptures draw upon Bauhaus artists Oskar Schlemmer and Paul Klee’s respective designs for theatre and puppetry. Other details refer to German Expressionism; Hablik’s crystalline architectural designs or stone relief work by the sculptor Bernhard Hoetger. Lindena invokes the social function of applied art and the role that it plays in the construction of narrative. Patrimonial sources are collaged with original video and photography that documents improvised dance, costumes and sets. Her work infers the notion of the ‘gesamtkunstwerk’. It enacts a process of translation; breaking up information, isolating detail, repeating and reworking her subjects within a practice that incorporates processes in sculpture, drawing, performance and the moving-image.

This will be Kalin Lindena’s first solo exhibition in the UK.

Kalin Lindena was born in Hanover in 1977 and studied at HBK Braunschweig. Her recent solo exhibitions include Oldenburger Kunstverein, Artothek Cologne, Kunstverein Heilbronn, Galerie Nagel Koln and Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden Baden. She was awarded the Art Cologne Prize for young art 2007 and is currently the Deutsche Bank artist in residence at the Villa Romana in Florence. Lindena is based in Berlin.