Centerless space
Hanna Stiegeler, Morgan Canavan
June 19, 2020 to August 8, 2020
Kottbusser Damm 7, Berlin, Germany
Exhibition Text
Finding the center of a given space requires a conception of its dimensions and of its boundaries. A centerless space, conversely, can exist only in the absence of dimension and boundary; it then almost necessarily refers not to literal physical space but instead to something else: an accumulation, a chain.
The innate inability to determine a center in these spaces in turn precludes absolute and definitive measurements. Sure, you can quantify and place in a relative sense: you are in front of this, behind that, after one thing, and before another. But since these axes each extend infinitely in all directions, your assessments or determinations need a new anchor whose referent is not a true origin point.
Considering an object within a centerless space confounds the visible: content is present but of unknown origin or destination. Physical traces of prior states act as a relative marker of location along one axis, but, maybe more importantly, also intimate the existence of other previously unconsidered axes. To be categorical and conclusive is inattentive, to be extensible is necessary. In this space, you can say only that you are at some stage of an infinite transformation or at some midpoint of an endless supply chain.
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Artist Biographies
Hanna Stiegeler’s practice uses images, both found and produced, to disect visual culture and its connections to commerce, history, and femininity. Appropriating imagery from commercial photography and public archives while also borrowing their language for self-produced images, Stiegeler constructs her screenprints through a manual and deliberately imprecise process. The resulting artworks, unique versions of otherwise reproducible images, hint and tease the latent and veiled narratives, labors, and contradictions of their source materials.
Stiegeler (*1985, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Her second solo exhibition at the gallery will take place in 2026, as will her her first institutional solo exhibition at E-Werk Freiburg. Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at Eigen+Art, Galerie Thomas Schulte, Gems, and the Goethe Institut Paris. Stiegeler received an MFA from the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig in 2019.