Life consists of conflicting forces that ideally hold each other in a creative tension but sometimes also tear relentlessly at each other. Tension has the potential to promote transformation and also implies the danger of stagnation or rupture.
The Berlin artist Hannah Hallermann has found a sculptural language for these dynamics, which can be applied to materials as well as to socio-political developments.
The exhibition in the Berlin project space Die Möglichkeit einer Insel shows a series of fictional tools that express the need to endure contradictions, to move between different frames of reference and to develop some kind of ambivalence competence. The sculptures are in a dialogue with wall works, which translate the tension into text form. "I feel challenged to show different perspectives and to question how elements from different systems can merge.This is usually followed by a call to help shape things.”, says Hannah Hallermann.
In the exhibition CHANGE IN SUSPENSE, objects remain in intermediate states, which deal with flexibility, but also with coercion and violence. Modular silicone elements function as buffer zones between metal modules, enabling compression and stretchability. Flexible use and the potential of their own changeability is virtually incorporated into the sculptural forms. Sculpture here does not mean stagnation, but the possibility of constant change. And how is it possible to allow ourself optimism and the will to succeed, without these categories immediately being appropriated by competitive pressures ?
A hanging work from the series "Startblock" seems to suggest a state of suspension between hesitation and action. The minimal form of the object is closely linked to a narrative component. A starting block is a place of jumping off that encompasses different chances and different leaps of faith, a starting point where contradictory feelings accumulate and questions impose themselves.
The exhibition CHANGE IN SUSPENSE confronts us with open questions: How to constantly realign actions in a time of extreme change? What lies in a concentrated collective pause before the action? When is the right time to leap forward ?
With text-material from Antonia Ruder, Saskia Trebing and Anka Ziefer