SA 16.12.2018 – from 5pm
Destruction / reconstruction
screening of films by Sandra Hauser
artist talk led by Gatien Du Bois
End of the Second World War, the Nazi ogre ebbed but the beast is not yet dead but still able to hit hard. In 1944, a V2 missile – « V » standing for « Vergeltungswaffe » (weapon of retaliation) – aimed at the Schaerbeek train station hit and partially demolished the building standing on the number 22-20, rue Vanderlinden. However, this fact isn’t proven with certainty so that it may have been allied bombs that fell on the site that now houses the V2Vingt exhibition space. Indeed, between March and August 1944, no less than 814 bombs were dropped on the facilities of the Schaerbeek train station, an essential node of the German supply chain.
In Germany, allied bombs fell in an eminently larger number. But, according to W.G. Sebald’s observations: this « experience lived by millions of people in the last years of the war, this unprecedented national humiliation, has never really been put into words and (…) those who were directly concerned did not share it or transmit it to the next generations ». The post-war economic miracle and the construction of a new German society took place at the price of a destruction / reconstruction going hand in hand with a ready repression mechanism: a psychic repression and a physical removal of the rubble transformed into artificial mountains (Trümmerbergen).
To examine these destruction / reconstruction processes, Brussels curator Gatien Du Bois has selected four short films by German artist Sandra Hauser: Trümmerfrauen – Even Wild Dogs Dance, 2016; Kapitulation, 2016; Weißt du wie viel Sternlein stehen (Do you know how many stars there are above?), 2010; The Patient. Investigation for a new identity, 2014-present. This screening will be followed by a discussion with the artist, whose work focuses on subjective realism, hyper sensibility for objects, emotions and surroundings and the space of the human psyche. Indeed, Sandra Hauser’s vocation is to reconstruct human emotions and dramas throughout a conceptual language. Starting from her own « biographic islands », she works out the moment in which a personal conflict becomes common to everyone. She pushes the practice of multidisciplinary to the limits, involving her personal private life to create new pieces; executing in this way a constant analysis of her own displaced past and daily occurrence.
Biography of the artist
Sandra Hauser (*1983 in Bad Aibling, Germany) is an interdisciplinary artist currently living and working in Berlin. From beginning on Sandra Hauser refuses to limit herself to just one medium, choosing the one that will best convey her message, like this combining in her work various media as for example performance, sculpture, drawing, painting and video. She started her carrier as director, costume and stage designer at the theatre. She studied Philosophy, Art History and Anthropology at the Ludwigs-Maximilian-University in Munich. In 2006 she studied visual arts with Stephan Huber and in 2011/12 with Hans Op de Beeck at the Academy of Fine Arts of Munich. In 2011 she was a guest student with Gregor Schneider at the Berlin University of Art.
Between 2012 and 2015, she was living and working in Rome. Benefiting from a project grant from the Deutsche Bank Kunst Rosenheim and the LfA Förderbank Bayern, she had her first solo show at the Kunstverein Rosenheim e.V. in 2014 (curated by Peter Weigel). In this occasion a catalogue was published with the support of the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts. Since then, she has participated in numerous exhibitions, some of them in international museums and institutions. Her works are currently shown at Galerie Sandra Bürgel in Berlin.
Practical information
16/12/2018 – from 5pm
V2Vingt: Rue Vanderlinden 20-22, 1030 Schaerbeek
V2Vingt 