Kerstin Flake looks for objects, places, spaces and images that she – at a temporal distance – stages and showcases in her studio, whereby for the artist the studio is not a classical fixed location. It can be abandoned old flats prior to being demolished, concrete apartment blocks, empty factories, shops, dune landscapes or cities in the USA, in which Flake in turn creates new spaces.
Kerstin Flake wants to change the camera’s predefined rectangular frame and the emerging static image. She wants to show her altering view of things and spaces in order to break with familiar sight conceptions and image expectations, and, by means of photography, to illuminate the documentary and narrative potential of the images. At the same time, she takes up new technical developments and she processes them artistically in her works. Through Kerstin Flake, the object takes on new life and appears to become an acting subject. It enters a stage, lets the space tell hidden stories, evokes unsuspected catastrophes and surreal sceneries. Things begin to dance, vibrate, float and set the seemingly ordered (pictorial) space in motion, directing one’s gaze to the actors and confusing the viewer. The artist thereby abandons the classical two-dimensional image space and integrates the exhibition space. She often stages her actors in space. Images and objects thereby communicate with each other and with the viewers.
Born in Karlsruhe in 1967, Kerstin Flake first studied theatre, film and media studies at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. She was a student from 1997 to 2003 at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig in the class of photography and media of Professor Joachim Brohm.
The exhibition is sponsored by the BMW Leipzig branch.
Opening: 31.05.2023, 6 pm
