Berlin Fassaden
Asta Gröting
Strenberg Press
English/German
Soft Cover
56 Pages
210x296mm
2017
ISBN 9783956793561
This publication accompanies the first comprehensive presentation of Asta Gröting’s project BERLIN FASSADEN. For her exhibition at KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, Gröting covered the walls and floors with sculptural silicone impressions of Berlin facades containing traces of bullet holes from the Second World War. Functioning like slow-exposure photographs, the sculptures capture the history of the facades, from the bullet’s impact during the war to the present day. Gröting reconstructs wounds as architectural traces and translates them into abstract pictures. Dust, dirt, and even graffiti are applied to the silicon casts, giving the negative imprints an almost painted effect, embodying trauma and time in a ghostly silicone skin. As Groting writes, “I want to look from inside these destroyed walls and facades into the world—as if I could see my own face staring back at me.” This exhibition catalogue, conceived with the artist, focuses on the making of BERLIN FASSADEN by presenting the artist’s original photographs of Berlin’s bullet-ridden facades alongside images depicting the on-site making of the silicon casts. The precise section of the facade is revealed and catalogued with its corresponding location, dimensions, and date. An accompanying essay by writer Deborah Levy explores the inner voice of the holes, scars, and histories transcribed on the architectural surfaces of buildings in Berlin.
About the artist:
Asta Gröting (born in Herford, Germany 1961) is a contemporary artist.[1] She works in a variety of media like sculpture, performance, and video. In her work, Gröting “is conceptually and emotionally asking questions of the social body by taking something away from it and allowing this absence to do the talking.
astagroeting.de
About the publisher:
Sternberg Press grew out of the small publishing house known as Lukas & Sternberg, founded in 1999 by Caroline Schneider. With a focus on art criticism, theory, fiction, and artists’ books, the Berlin-New York based publishing endeavor was set in motion with a pocket book series—edited in part with Nicolaus Schafhausen. Dedicated to an expanded notion of writing on art, Sternberg Press has created a formidable platform in which practitioners from the fields of art and culture (architecture, design, film, politics, literature, and philosophy) can engage in a critical discourse. Each book is a special object celebrating creative publishing at its best, based on both meticulous editorial decisions and distinctive design. Through both commissioned and translated works, Sternberg Press seeks out the blind spots within contemporary discourse and offers a timely response to the related debates.
sternberg-press.com
