Paula Oltmann - Phantastic Landscapes

21
03/11 16:00  —  20/11/22 22:00

I wanted to paint a landscape
It started out randomly, without thinking, I was listening to music
The music took me to another place

How can I make something as transformative as music […]

Quote: Kim Gordon, Northhampton, Massachusetts 2007, in: Paul Thek. Artist‘s Artist, hg. v. Harald Falkenberg, Peter Weibel, Karlsruhe 2008.

Paula Oltmann's installations are permeated by the increasingly strong influence of digital image cultures. Sometimes they appear at first to be natural and then turn out to be artificial, sometimes it is the other way round. They form fragmentary phantasms of a fictitious landscape, some of which have been created by an artificial intelligence, a machine, and are subject to strange transformations.

The title Phantastic Landscapes already contains a reference to the fantastic, a fictional image of nature, with which Oltmann questions the semantic concept of the term "landscape" in general. In her work, Oltmann examines the natural landscape as a body and specifically questions the topicality of the classical concept of nature. In doing so, she uses organic "natural materials" such as wax and wood, but also plastics and digital imaging processes.

Landscapes are not and have never been fixed; they have been subject to exponentially increasing man-made change since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The image of a landscape, the imitation of a real, visible section of nature, as shaped particularly by the epoch of Romantic painting, has been permanently incorporated into the general understanding of an ideal-typical, i.e. untouched, natural landscape, and persists to this day.

The gap that opens up between appearance on the one hand and cognition on the other allows a sphere of disquiet to enter. Fantasticism is therefore related to areas of the seemingly uncontrollable, the intangible, and is in turn representative of processes in which we are confronted with a sense of powerlessness and dependence.

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Paula Oltmann (*1997 in Kiel) completed her Bachelor's degree in Art and German Studies with Antje Majewski at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts in 2022 and is currently studying for her Master's degree with Ina Weber at the UdK Berlin.

Exhibitions (selection):

Group exhibition "Game Trails", Galerie Cubeplus, Kiel, 2022. Group exhibition "Retreat", Off Space Fabrikstraße Kiel, 2022. Solo exhibition "Digging into the Future", PrimaKunst, Kiel, 2021. Group exhibition "ROSAGRUEN", Atelierhaus im Anscharpark, Kiel, 2020.

Further events from the format Frontal View:
OPEN CALL Frontal View! 13/07 — 28/02/23 16
NO TALENT STUDIO in collaboration with Dena Tabari 03/11 — 20/11/22 20
Heiko Wommelsdorf – Schall-Mauer 04/05 — 04/06/23 52
Annemarie Jessen – Nackte Namen 18/05 — 04/06/23 58
Parade - Animationskurs 2023/24 05/03 — 10/03/24 105
Maximilian Flachsenberg – A Dance for Increasing Distances 03/07 — 08/07/24 128
Further events from the format Alumni:
Jian Haake 14/07 — 15/07/22 4
Merle Michaelis 15/07/22 5
Jenny Reißmann - anlanden 04/08 — 20/08/22 6
Nilofar Rezai - Below the surface 26/08 — 17/09/22 13
Artist tour Nilofar Rezai 26/08/22 15
Hyunsuk Yi - Phantom Limb 30/09 — 22/10/22 11
NO TALENT STUDIO in collaboration with Dena Tabari 03/11 — 20/11/22 20
Linda Ebert - A Long Journey Into Darkness 13/04 — 29/04/23 39
Heiko Wommelsdorf – Schall-Mauer 04/05 — 04/06/23 52
Performance Alexei Vesselov 25/11/23 80
Happening Dorothee Brübach 25/11/23 82
Kollektives Lesen mit Louise Preuß: Part I – Wer singt? Wer veranlaßt zu singen? 07/12/23 84
Kollektives Lesen mit Louise Preuß: Part II – Poesie und Politik – Poesie ist Politik? 16/12/23 85
Kollektives Lesen mit Louise Preuß: Part III – Geschriebene Frauen, Frauen in der Schrift 19/12/23 86
Artist Talk mit Neele Marie Denker & Elkin Salamanca 11/01/24 81
Kollektives Lesen mit Louise Preuß: Part IV – Die Orange leben 12/01/24 87
Installative Präsentation des digitalen Unort-Archivs des Kunstvereins Sankt Pauli by Ramona Kortya & Malin Dorn 15/02/24 97
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