Christopher Grimes Projects is pleased to present Grid, Tree, Sky and Reflection, an exhibition of new works by Veronika Kellndorfer, whose distinct technique of binding silk-screened photographic images onto large glass panels, bridges the gap between photography, architecture, painting and installation. 

Kellndorfer’s work examines the graphic quality of architecture and its intersection with the landscape, as well as the transformation of light and movement between interior and exterior space. Her use of scale succeeds in engaging the viewer by altering perception and spatial relationships, dramatically enlarging the underlying motif, and activating the space. Reflections place the viewer within the images at the same time, glare and the spatial ambiguity created by cast shadows form a depth and complexity to the work.

Modernist architects have long been enamored with glass and its ambiguous qualities—solid yet invisible, present yet transparent. Kellndorfer’s interest in the ambiguity of space within homes designed by Albert Frey and John Lautner, for example, is evident in her studies of architectural elements such as glass windows, blinds and screens, whether man-made or shelters of bamboo, that provide privacy yet filter natural light to create a kind of enigmatic environment. This ambiguity of space is heightened by Kellndorfer’s use of highly reflective glass panels that are often life-sized, inviting the viewer to experience his or her own subjective surroundings.

The new works on John Lautner's Sheats Goldstein residence allow Kellndorfer to amalgamate her research on Brazilian Modernism, inspired by Lina Bo Bardi, Artigas, Burle Marx and Niemeyer with Californian architecture of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Kellndorfer investigates the origination and decay of architecture, which she relates to the formal qualities of modernist paintings. Kellndorfer’s process involves extracting imagery of spaces from photographs—often taken with a 4x5, large format camera—which are then fused to glass.

The ink used for screen printing consists of glass particles, pigments and an emulsion which is printed directly on the glass. After the printing process the color is fused into the glass. A mixture of pigments and glass powder melts into the glass at an oven temperature of almost 1472 degrees Fahrenheit and merges with it. The reflective medium allows the actual space to interact with the represented architectural space printed on it. The work itself takes on architectural form and materiality bridging its subject matter to the delivery medium.

“My research into architecture proceeds from the idea that the past and present of a society can be read in its buildings.”

—Veronika Kellndorfer

Veronika Kellndorfer, Stilted House, 2017
2-panel silkscreen print on glass, each panel: 94-1/2 x 53-1/8 inches (240 x 135 cm), edition of 5

“Architecture is inevitably a projection of a two-dimensional plane into a three dimensional space while painting is the opposite; a projection of space onto a plain surface—the back-projection of something three-dimensional onto a two-dimensional surface.”

—Veronika Kellndorfer

Combining glass with vitreous silk screens generates the impression of flickering light, dichroic complementary colors allowing reflections and shadows. Kellndorfer’s sculptural works resemble gardens of mirrors, creating a multitude of almost filmic light movements, shadows, and colors that change according to the movements of the viewer. It’s an almost morphological transformation, in which a static object achieves the quality of being ambiguous and unstable. This play of light brings in the cinematic aspects of filmic sequences, and the distilled frames become multipliers that confuse perception and space. The overall effect results from both materiality and cultural techniques of scaling.

Kellndorfer explorers the infinite possibilities offered by the dialectics of transferring a three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional image, then reproducing them as sculptural, architectural forms.

“Kellndorfer’s photographs emphasize the values of the International Style—simplicity, economy, order—but complicate them with layers of local vision, both hers and ours. The results are haunting elegiac images that pay tribute to the ideals of high modernism, yet also cast them adrift in the shifting context of the here and now.”

—Sharon Mizota, ArtForum

“By using highly reflective glass as an image carrier, I avoid the fixedness of a photographic image and the idea of an image as a window in the Renaissance or Albertian sense. My desire is to work with a somehow fluid concept of geometry.”

—Veronika Kellndorfer

“I am captivated by the notion of architecture as a projection onto a two-dimensional plane. In painting it is always the projection of space onto a surface—the back-projection of something three-dimensional onto a two-dimensional surface. The reflections on the glass allow the real space to interact with the printed space.”

“By making use of the transparency of the glass and by not making it opaque, the space behind the picture, which is typically excluded, amalgamates with the printed background and adds another layer to the layers within the overall image. By using highly reflective, transparent glass as an image carrier, I avoid the fixedness of an enlarged photograph representing a house as a static object. My desire is to bring a somehow fluid geometry into rationalism.”

“What you see is the radical integration of interior and exterior space. I wanted to address the shifting layers within the image, a phenomenon that occurs in almost any window along the California coast—a phenomenon that touches the universal and the specific.”

VERONIKA KELLNDORFER

Originally through painting and then through photography, Kellndorfer has been concerned with the physical and social construction of space in her body of work. The images in this exhibition represent classic modernist architectural landmarks in Los Angeles, yet rather than capturing the iconic wide-angle views famously photographed by Julius Shulman, Kellndorfer focuses on the intimate details of windows and reflections and how they reveal the ephemeral nature of seeing, as well as the subjectivity of space. Printed on glass as a screen print, the carrier material on the one hand evokes a parallel to the constructive element of the window pane, and on the other hand it is reminiscent of a film still with dreamlike connotations. Kellndorfer works and lives in Berlin, Germany.

Learn More

To inquire about any of works featured in this exhibition,
please email projects@cgrimes.com.