The NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein presents “The Epic”, Berlin-based photo and video artist Pola Sieverding’s first institutional solo exhibition.

The exhibition “The Epic” presents a selection from her “Arena” series, in which Pola Sieverding questions the correlation between documentation and staging. The title “The Epic” already hints at the comprehensive visual-narrative storyline nature of her works, which seem to be subject to certain regulations, comparable to the structuring of a text by verse metre.

In pose, costume and choreography the artist emphasizes the iconography of wrestling, at the same time scrutinising the validity of narration as well as of pictures in general and photography in particular. Furthermore for the exposition at the NAK the film “The Epic” came into being. It pays special attention to the cinematographic vocabulary of precise camera work to high-contrast montage. In doing so the formalistic aesthetics of the boxers’ naked upper parts of the bodies are accentuated in front of a dark background and the usage of slow-motion-techniques simultaneously integrates the spectator positively into the event.

Pola Sieverding arranges her photographic works into spatial casts equal to the nature of an artist’s workshop. By positioning photography like sculptural work in front of a wall, the spatial limitation of the walls is entirely occupied via the medium of the photographic mural, so that three-dimensionality and narration can be anticipated like in a relief frieze. Moreover, in the architectural design of the tribune, which is placed in the upper levels of the exposition, a concrete reference to the setting of athletic competitions and their historical connotation is given.

In the exhibition “The Epic” Pola Sieverding translates the staging of the mythological fight into a contemporary discourse about questions and strategies of a medial-aesthetic perception of body, sex and finally identity.

Pola Sieverding is a visual artist working with Photography, Film and Video. Her works are circling around questions of representation and image production within cultural formations that are motivated by various concepts of desire and identification processes. The idea of portraiture in terms of an interpretive reading of the inscriptions of culture in the human body is a recurring moment in her work. Her most recent work concentrates on the Arena as a theatrical space in which bodies become images, phantasies become reality and the relationship between performer and audience is imminent of its architecture. She studied at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Surikov Institute Moscow and attained her MFA at the University of the Arts Berlin in 2007. She has been invited as an Artist in Residence to Ramallah, Prague and Lisbon and as a visiting lecturer at the International Academy of Art Palestine. She has exhibited internationally at Aram Art Gallery, Seoul; Art in General, New York; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Lumiar Cité, Lisbon; Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin; Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin; Dubai Photo Exhibition, Dubai; et al. Pola Sieverding lives and works in Berlin and is represented by the Anna Jill Lüpertz Gallery.

Source: press release

The Epic
Pola Sieverding
NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein
04.03.- 06.05.2016

More info at:
www.neueraachenerkunstverein.de
www.polasieverding.com