Bettina Pousttchi: Suspended Mies

The Arts Club of Chicago is proud to present Bettina Pousttchi: Suspended Mies. Berlin-based artist Bettina Pousttchi is best known for her large-scale photographic interventions in public space, covering entire facades of buildings with images redolent with historical or architectural meaning. In her photography and sculpture she further explores the connections between systems of time and space from a transnational perspective.

For her exhibition at the Arts Club of Chicago, the German artist (born 1971, Mainz) has developed a new site-specific photo installation that responds to the work of architect Mies van der Rohe, who designed the famed “floating staircase” at The Arts Club. The installation is comprised of three parts that bring together Mies’s legacy in New York, London and Chicago. The first part, a large-scale photograph of the Seagram Building printed on textile, extends the length of the entire west gallery; the second part addresses Mansion House Square, Mies’s unbuilt project for London; the third is The Arts Club’s own physical space. Visitors to the gallery are met with a space that employs photography as an architectural element, thus redirecting the viewing experience.

A graduate of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she studied with Rosemarie Trockel and Gerhard Merz, Pousttchi has exhibited internationally since 2001 and had solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, the Nasher Sculpture Center Dallas, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the Kunsthalle Basel, and the Temporäre Kusthalle, Berlin. Research for this exhibition took place at the Villa Aurora, Los Angeles, where Pousttchi had a residency in 2016. She lives and works in Berlin.