Artists have always been fascinated by ruins. As traces of a bygone era, they remind us that our work product, too, is destined to become a ruin. Ruins constitute a source both for interpreting our history and for imagining our future. The three artists presented move the ruin into the heart of their work, focussing on its origins and its evolution and culling from the ubiquitous flood of images in online news, in magazines and films. En route to disappearing themselves, these images here give rise to novel forms, on the border between photography and other media.

Brunet’s »Boîte Noire« is a series of renderings – on paper and tapestries – drawn from a 3D space modelled out of thousands of internet images of ruins from the war in Syria. The collages of Maelzer present visions at once apocalyptic and lyrical – futurist hypotheses quilted together from various traces we leave in cities, nature and even outer space. In her installations, Snelling recreates parts of the Chinese cities Chongqing and Yangzhou, as well as the urban village Caochangdi, with modern high-rises and makeshift shelters overflowing with images as garish as they are ephemeral. (Sonia Voss)

Framework program

Saturday, Oct 9, 2021, 2 – 10 pm
Soft Opening
With a Curator’s Guided Tour (held in English) at 4 pm.
All artists will be present.

Sunday, Oct 31, 2021, 2 – 6 pm
Soft Finissage
With a Curator’s Guided Tour (held in English) at 4 pm.
Tracey Snelling will be present.

Artists’ bios

Thibault Brunet, based in Paris, has developed a practice based on real and imaginary topographies and virtually generated images, using technologies such as 3D scanners, computer software and video games. Brunet graduated from the Paul Valéry University in Montpellier and the Nîmes Art Academy. His work has been presented in numerous solo shows in France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain, and Germany (EMOP Berlin 2012) and in group exhibitions, among others, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Spinnerei, Leipzig. He is the winner of the 2019 MAD/ADAGP Artist Book Revelation Award, the 2016 Photo London John Kobal Residency Award, the 2014 PMU/Le Bal Carte Blanche Award, the 2013 FOAM Talent Award, and the 2012 BNF Bourse du Talent Award. He was part of the 2011 edition of reGeneration2 at Lausanne’s Musée de l’Élysée. During a residency at the Institut Français in New York, Brunet began his Boîte Noire series, creating a virtual 3D space from online media photos of the war ruins in Syria.

Lee Maelzer is a London based artist. Her practice spans from painting to collages made with found photographs that evoke uncanny environments and situations, often raising questions about the tension between nature and the urban environment. Maelzer studied at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art in London. Since 2005, she has had nine solo exhibitions in the UK and has exhibited internationally in numerous group shows. She has also curated several exhibitions in London galleries. She received the Bryan Robertson Trust Award 2019, the Abbey Fellowship 2004 at The British School at Rome, participated twice in Bloomberg ARTFutures, and took part in several residency programs in Europe, Tunisia, Mexico, and the US. Her work was featured in The Age of Collage 3 (Gestalten Books). Among other academic positions, Maelzer is a senior lecturer in Fine Art at the University of East London.

Tracey Snelling is an American artist living and working in Berlin. Through the use of sculpture, photography, video, and large-scale installation, she gives a personal impression of a place, its people and their experience. Snelling has exhibited in international museums and institutions and has had solo shows throughout the US, as well as in China, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, and Italy. She received the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2015), a fellowship at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan (2017), an Artist Residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2017/2018), and the Foundwork Art Prize (2020). She produced commissioned works at the Historisches Museum Frankfurt and Facebook in California. Her installation Shanghai/Chongqing Hot pot/Mixtape was presented in the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale 2019 and her Maüsebunker at the UIAV during the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2020.

Oct 9 — 31, 2021
Soft Opening: Sat, Oct 9, 2 – 10 pm,
+ Framework program: please see above

Villa Heike

Freienwalder Str. 17, 13055 Berlin
[District: Alt-Hohenschönhausen | Borough: Lichtenberg]

Opening hours: Wed – Sun 2 – 6 pm, and by appointment: post@1736778465villa1736778465heike1736778465.org1736778465

Admission free