Works:
Backdrop III, 2022 digital printing on PVC tarpaulin, unique, 150 x 322 cm
Backdrop I, 2022 digital printing on PVC tarpaulin, unique, 400 x 322 cm
Backdrop II, 2022 digital printing on PVC tarpaulin, unique, 171 x 322 cm
A HOUSE WITH A GARDEN by SARIE NIJBOER
A poetry of unfinished environments and constantly changing settings. The artist Jane Garbert takes temporary places — such as renovation areas, building sites or backstage spaces — out of their original context and places them in new surroundings, thereby creating a tension that unravels a new chain of associations. In her work, she records the seemingly banal processes of these "non–places" in a filmic and photographic manner. Her inspiration comes from the aesthetics of unfinished buildings, including the ornaments and rhythms found in the materiality of the building environment.
For her exhibition at IN THE RACK ROOM, the artist took the stereotypical dream of a house with a garden — a cliché dream of people seeking safety and security, nature and property — as a starting point. In the room, photographs are displayed on the wall on a large scale and in smaller formats, which Garbert has brought together in the exhibition space. The large scale wall paper photos reveal three components: tree trunks, blue dry wall sheets and concrete wall. Found by chance, the respective pictorial contents reveal a construction site. Tree trunks are often used in constructions as temporary stabilisation modules, they can support 20 tonnes of weight to stabilise the ceiling, but in Garbert's work they also give a hint of a temporary forest.
Combined with the concrete and blue dry wall sheets, the tree trunks offer a kind of sensuality and poetic moment of the construction environment. The large-scale wallpapers are presented alongside 6 photographs. The works NYM-J1–3 are part of the photo series Ikebana, which show playful installations of cables. The title of the series refers to the Japanese tradition of flower arranging; themes such as harmony, temporal transience and linear arrangement are reinterpreted - in a poetic, sensual but also playful way. The pictorial content is not decorated by precisely placed branches or flowers, but white and green cables, tape, metal rods and cable ties hold the arrangements together. Each randomly found material is taken out of its original context by means of photography and represented anew in terms of content. Also on display is are the photographs Partner in Crime, In Line and Spring in which cables play the protagonists too — but refer rather to the fleeting nature of an encounter.
Through the transformative power of her photography, Garbert's visual gaze becomes tangible that interweaves different aspects of her work. The photographs on display are turned into symbols of transitions and temporary states. The resulting installation expands the experience of the exhibition space, generating an illusion in the eye of the observer, and thereby transforming the exhibition space into an idiosyncratic "house with a garden".
JANE GARBERT (*1988, Berlin) studied Fine Arts at the Universität der Künste, Berlin under Thomas Zipp and Christine Streuli. She graduated in 2019 as Meisterschüler and received already several nominations, such as Schulz Stübner Preis, Meisterschüler Preis and Berlin Masters Toy Award. She has exhibited widely at art galleries and institutions in Berlin such as Junge Malerei der Stipendiatinnen DK Stiftung, Inselgalerie, Galerie Nord/ Kunstverein Tiergarten. Alongside her Berlin presentations she has exhibited at Sergey Kuryokhin Center for Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg; Oben, Vienna and Palais für aktuelle Kunst, Glückstadt among others.
Special thanks to Yannick Nuss for the great poster.