Leonie Weber
November 29, 2008 - January 3, 2009
Schalter is pleased to announce She Was Here by Karlsruhe-based artist Leonie Weber. The exhibition will present video installation and photography as well as a small sculptural object. This is the first solo presentation of Weber's work in Berlin.
Weber's works concentrate on banal situations, shedding light on the complex relations behind the so-called "normal." Her videos show the impact of pride, disappointment, shame, and embarrassment on interpersonal communication and point to the conventions and expectations that provoke these feelings. Her models and installations explore the public and private environments within which human lives unfold and represent aspects of everyday life without striving to reproduce reality.
She Was Here is based on a series of artworks that Weber encountered over a period of years in her dreams. Ironically, the dreamt works appeared not to be her own, but rather those of other artists, friends, and students. The small sculpture, Rockport, for example, first appeared in a dream as the work of an 18-year-old female student, whom Weber had assigned to create something dealing with the student's surroundings. In another dream, an unknown female artist crashed Weber's exhibition opening and began to manipulate Weber's work as a "suggestion for improvement."
From such material attributed to others, Weber developed a series that nonetheless clearly bears her own signature: the depicted situations are loaded with expectation and the works themselves are framed by conflicted feelings such as amazement, jealousy, and envy of others' accomplishments.
Leonie Weber, who studied in Weimar and Chicago, lives and works in Karlsruhe, Germany. Her work has been shown throughout Germany, and in the United States. In 2008, she was awarded the annual fellowship of the Baden-Wurttemberg Foundation for Art.