Helga Griffiths: Crossing

Crossing at Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken is the first major solo exhibition dedicated to the work of German artist Helga Griffiths (b. 1959 in Ehingen/Donau). Her multimedia and multisensory space installations (comprising sound, video, and scent) explore the boundaries between art, science and technology. Audience interaction is as important as the site-specific character of these works. This exhibition at Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken showcases all facets of Griffiths’ oeuvre.

For over 20 years, Helga Griffiths’ work has explored the boundary between human nature and environment. In multisensory installations, she researches the thresholds and limits of human perception through artistic and scientific means. These include spectacular works like a flight across the glacial landscape of her own brain she created in close collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt.

Her works are based on the concept of an “experiential space”—a multidimensional and multisensory space designed to evoke memories, feelings, and ideas in observers, or to confront them with visual, sonic, olfactory, or haptic stimuli that stem from the artist’s own realm of experience. Griffiths’ work often employs a special technique: the artist takes information that we perceive through one sense (e.g., sight or hearing) and transfers it to a different sense (e.g., smell). In this way, she creates a dialogue that unfolds on a subliminal, intuitive plane—one that is capable of transcending and expanding conventional sensory experience.

Biography
Helga Griffiths earned a bachelor’s degree (with distinction) in fine art from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ in 1991. From 1992 to 1994 she furthered her studies at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart and the Universität für Kunst und Design in Karlsruhe (in new media).

She is the recipient of numerous prizes and scholarships, including the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris (2001, France), the NEA (a scholarship to the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in Puerto Rico in 2004), Orte in Krems (2012, Austria), and Schöppingen (2016, Germany). Her works can be found in renowned collections, such as those of TBA TV Station (Tokyo, Japan), the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum (Dresden), and the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum (Düren, Germany). Griffiths’ multisensory installations have been featured at various biennials, such as the Cairo Biennial, the Curitiba Biennial in Brazil, the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial in Japan, the Havanna Biennial and the Seoul International Media Art Biennial. Her work has featured in exhibitions at museums around the world, such as the Bundeskunsthalle (Bonn, Germany), the Artificial Light in Art Centre (Eindhoven, Netherlands), Kunsthalle Kiel (Germany), Nevada Museum of Art, USA, Seoul Museum of Art, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France), Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (Oslo, Norway), OK (Linz, Austria), Oscar Niemeyer Museum (Curitiba, Brazil), and the Centre for Art and Media ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany).

Related events

Director’s tour with Dr. Andrea Jahn
September 27, November 22, and December 13, 5–6pm 

Guided tour by a blind person
November 4–5, tour through the old part of Saarbrücken, guided by Laurence Jamet 

“Art and Olfactory Sense”
November 10, 7–9pm, lecture by Dr. Annick Le Guérer, in French with German translation 

Artist’s tour with Helga Griffiths
January 14, 4–6pm, presented by Dr. Andrea Jahn