Rosa Barba: Blind Volumes

The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is presenting Blind Volumes, an installation realized by Berlin-based artist Rosa Barba (*1972), from September 23, 2016 until January 8, 2017. In this work created specifically for the Schirn, in which she responds to the openly accessible public setting of the rotunda, Barba combines the artistic media of film and sculpture. Inside the rotunda, she has erected an expansive, geometrically intricate steel construction consisting of some 80 serial framework elements. The work is 12 meters tall and nearly fills the entire lobby of the Schirn. The complex structure, which resembles a building skeleton and calls to mind the Constructivist visions of the early twentieth century, confronts visitors with a wealth of possible associations. Rosa Barba uses the installation as the stage for a dynamic choreography combining visual imagery, light, and sound. The artist also cites a selection of her own works, which are presented here in a new constellation. In addition to the film-based sculpture entitled One Way Out (2009) and Conductor (2014), a rhythmically pulsating sound object, the Schirn is also showing two new works by Rosa Barba in conjunction with the Blind Volumes exhibition: In White Museum – Live (2016), 70mm and 16mm film projectors appear as actors in an acoustically controlled light show. This work originated in a live performance of the same title presented by Barba in collaboration with the well-known US drummer Chad Taylor at MoMA PS1 in New York last spring. It represents a continuation of the “White Museum” series she first introduced in 2010, in which a film image is projected as a rectangular field of light into outdoor space from museum buildings. About the Plate and Receiver (2016), a 16mm film also featured in the installation, is a poetic reflection on space and time, the autonomy of technology, and the limits of human knowledge accompanied by electronic music. It is an outgrowth of one of Barba’s most recent installations in the “White Museum” series, a work she realized at the Hirsch Observatory of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The various film and sculptural works will be presented continuously in the Schirn rotunda in an arrangement conceived by the artist.

Curator Esther Schlicht about the installation: “In Blind Volumes Rosa Barba transposes the cinematic principle of montage into a spatial, architectural context for the first time. Proceeding from that basis, she develops a polyphonic dialog through the interplay of new and previous film and sculptural works. In this way, her architectural vision becomes an archive of her own oeuvre and of the history from which it has emerged. For viewers, however, access to this archive remains fragmentary, for this multifaceted sculptural arrangement reveals itself in constantly shifting perspectives as they walk through and around it—but never in its entirety.”

Born in Italy, in 1972, the artist and filmmaker Rosa Barba has been living and working in Berlin since 2008. She studied theater and film at the University of Erlangen from 1993 to 1995 and visual art and film at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne from 1995 to 2000. Her film and sculptural works have been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions at international venues, including, among others, the 53rd and 56th Venice Biennale (2009 and 2015), the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014), the Bergen Kunsthall in Norway (2013), the Kunsthaus Zürich (2012) and the Tate Modern in London (2010). Solo exhibitions in Germany were presented at the Kunstverein Braunschweig in 2011 and the Albertinum in Dresden in 2015/16. Aside from the exhibition at the Schirn, Barba’s work is currently on show at the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo and will be presented at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, and the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein n.b.k. in 2016. Rosa Barba has won a number of awards in recent years, including the Prix International d’Art Contemporain conferred by the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco (2016) and the Nam June Paik Award (2010). Works by Rosa Barba are featured in prominent public collections, such as the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, the National Gallery, Staatliche Museen Berlin, the Tate Modern, London, the Museu d’Art Contemporani in Barcelona and the Kunsthaus Zürich.

Curator: Esther Schlicht
Press contact: Pamela Rohde (Head of Press/Public Relations): presse [​at​] schirn.de / T (+49 69) 29 98 82 148
Press material: www.schirn.de (texts, images, and films for download under PRESS)