"AS A STRANGER I MOVED IN, AS A STRANGER I MOVE OUT"
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Gachang Art Space

795, Samsan-ri, Gachang-myeon, Dalseong-gun, Daegu, KOREA
29. 05. – 06. 08.2018
Photography by Barbara Proschak

“Céline Struger is an artist from Austria, working in sculpture and installation. She is interested in the democracy of form between crafted and found objects and the digital and analog interpretation of sites. She studied transdisciplinary arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and has since exhibited in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Québec and Auckland.

As a stranger I moved in, as a stranger I move out” – These lines are taken from the song cycle “Winter Journey”/”Winterreise” by Franz Schubert. The song was interpreted in German by the Korean opera singer Kwangchul Youn in 2009 and inspired me to look into the interest and curiosity of Asian artists in German romanticism. I started to wonder which parts of the arts are slipping through cultural filters, which ones are successfully exported, which ones are rejected by a foreign taste? How are mutual stereotypes and presumptions in Eastern and Western contemporary arts dealt with?

In the mixed-media installation developed at Gachang Art Studio, Céline Struger is sampling motives of German romanticism into her perception of Korean indoor space. By spreading water basins over the floor and separating the space with hanging partitions, she limits the audiences range of movement and directs it’s viewing perspective into pre-defined paths. Using both found and crafted objects she investigates the cultural implications of building and household materials. 

As a reference to traditional Buncheong ceramics, she appropriates historical floral patterns and transforms them into three-dimensional plasticine entities. In this way, she explores the readability of these seemingly universal aesthetics. In response to the exhibition’s title, she aims to create an atmosphere of the space.”

Gachang Art Studio