Alexandra Ranner
20. Juni – 1. August 2009
curated by Nicola Graef
in cooperation with CUC Charim Ungar Contemporary Berlin
The artist Alexandra Ranner of Berlin builds enigmatic rooms in form of models, photography and light boxes; the sense of these rooms oscillates between departure and arrival. Her work is about archiving secrets, potential dark crimes or obscure obsessions. The rooms hide something unexpected. Until now, Ranner's installations have been unaccessible; they have been installed as space-capsules or stationary caravans. The only way to see the work has been as an outsider looking in, watching the work from the perspective of a voyeur and not as a participant.
Entrance into a room by Alexandra Ranner will now be possible with her installation "Schlafzimmer II/08", which was shown as part of the exhibition "Interieur/Exterieur - Wohnen in der Kunst" at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg for the first time.
A Room without windows - not entirely dark or light. The walls are poorly painted with an unfriendly, somewhat eerie color. A television set sits in front of the wall. The sound is off. The viewer looks into the bedroom and searches. He looks for himself in the mirror. He is confused. The viewer is alone, alone in a room. The bedroom is an independent world in which meaning can be found in everything, or one in which all meaning is sucked out and disappears. There is no solution, no clarification, just a nagging intuition that something is not right. The bedroom is not a room but an atmosphere, a suggestion, a projection.The bedroom contains the potential to see a lot and the risk of seeing nothing.
Alexander Ranner's works were shown at the 49th Biennale in 2001, at the first Yokohama Triennale (2001), at International Art Exhibition in Athens (2003) and at 'Fraktale IV' (Palast der Republik, Berlin) in 2005. She gained her diploma in 1994 at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.
Nicola Graef