ICON

Pola Sieverding

Using photography, film, installation and sound, Pola Sieverding’s works explore questions of representation and image production within cultural constructs determined by various different concepts of desire and processes of identification. A recurrent aspect of her work is the portrait, in the sense of an interpretative read of the inscriptions culture makes on the human body. With ICON, we present an exhibition that focuses on a selection of portraits Sieverding made in her immediate environment in which she pairs key figures in her social life with the body politics and image practices of various different epochs in art and cinematic history. The pictorial language of these portraits, in other words posture, coloration and composition, combine the sublimity of the old masters with the theatrical sobriety and critical sympathy of New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit). For the exhibition, the photographs will be presented on coloured walls for the first time, thus defining the entire space as a site of intimate contemplation within the public space of an exhibition.