Gitte Schäfer: The Raven Is Dead

Kirkhoff is proud to present Gitte Schäfer’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. Schäfer is born in Stuttgart in 1972 and lives in Berlin.

For the exhibition The Raven Is Dead Schäfer has created new works in different materials, techniques and medias, such as drawings, paintings, collages, 3-dimensional panels in MDF, reliefs cut in plaster, objects trouvés and furniture that resemble an interior or a stage design. Equivalent to the variation of technique and media, the artist points to other connotations with the title The Raven Is Dead. The title is not descriptive but functions as another layer of meaning and opens for a series of possible readings.

Characteristic of Schäfer’s production is a re-contextualization of works: She incorporates and connects objects from fleemarkets, watercolours from anonymous artists, details from famous artists’ works, plants from nature; she creates abstract paintings with the round edges of a beer mat, she deconstructs furniture and puts them together in new forms. The connection of objects creates new contexts, creates different layers and aesthetics, both high and low. In this respect, she works with ‘art and life’, connecting objets trouvés from nature and everyday life and turning them into art objects because of their sculptural qualities.

In Schäfer’s intimate paintings and drawings she concentrates on cultural emblems and has previously worked with romantic or romantized motifs, collected from magazines, postcards or china. Schäfer borrows from already existing works and earlier styles, such as the baroque, abstraction or concrete art. The individual motifs or the technique will probably resemble something familiar, but the presentation of all the works as a whole suggests numerous connotations and approaches to the works. In general, the exhibition is characterized by aspects of time through the presentation of styles, the work process, the motifs and the recontextualization.

Gitte Schäfer is educated at Chelsea College of Art and the Kunsthochschule Berlin, Weißensee 2003. She participated at The Inaugural Show at Kirkhoff, February 2004 and showed solo at Chouakri Brahms Berlin in 2004. She’ll show solo at Perry Rubenstein Gallery, March 2005.

Gitte Schäfer
The Raven Is Dead