Monday, August 17, 2009

Wiebke Siem



Wiebke Siem is best known for extensive groups of works in which she translates everyday items such as clothing, toys, wigs and bags into finely crafted – and often oversized – objects made of wood or fabric. 

Since 2005, the Berlin-based artist has been developing a new series of works that hark back to experiences and fantasies from her own childhood. She assembles articles of furniture, apparently ethnological objects and goblin-like cloth figures into psychologically charged spatial installations, combining the bizarre figures (mostly made from fabrics such as loden, a traditional cloth often used for menswear) with prewar and 1950s home décors. 

Siem's household scenarios are both homely and uncanny; they have an oppressive quality but are above all humorous and absurd. In her choice of forms the artist draws upon and transforms literary motifs as well as themes from classical modernist and contemporary art. 

These new works are being shown for the first time in the exhibition Die Fälscherin (The Forger). Installed in a specially designed suite of rooms, the new presentation combines aspects of a private environment, a stage-like backdrop, an archive and a monumental single piece. 

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from one of Siem's installations, in which the artist as forger "obsessively produces artefacts that are not authentic, that are not what they appear". 

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