On the first two visits done by the person who write these notes to Wolfgang Scholz (Dresden, Germany 1958) studio; it was necessary to overcome a very steep spiral shaped stair, so that, for a moment, one felt like an improvised equilibrist. Once upstairs, there is a terrace that leads to the spacious studio, whose walls of glass establish a continuity with the open space of the roof terrace. In the studio and, as though they were a box of surprises, appear one after the other the pictures; nearly all of a large format.

Since those first experiences (if one can understand the observation of a picture as an experience, both passive and relatively active at the same time), up to the present moment, there is the playfulness of memory such, that it probably lies, or is mistaken, when one says hat the first pictures that afternoon –of the first visit – were red. Whether this is true or not, I do not know and it is unimportant; what is important, is to associate by contrast, the intensity of the color with the melancholic atmosphere of that afternoon, with the space of suspense that the disposition of the objects created: nearly all the pictures were turned toward the wall (leaned against it); in addition there were one or two chairs and a small table. The artist was not present.  Wolfgang Scholz was in his country of origin: Germany.

The backside of a painting, especially if it is covered, can provoke simultaneously, somber feelings and their counter part; the promise of what vibrates in its chromatic colors, and the composition of what is painted or drawn on the canvas. Thus, what is hidden by the back of the canvas, and its revelation there after, introduces us to a transit space of uncertainty. It plays with the moment of waiting and the consummation of our gaze upon the painting, which is pleasurable if the picture is well resolved, and more so if the piece connects with the eye; for reasons that our conscience cannot explain.

Returning to the theme of memory, one must say the obvious: it is always retrospective, which can become a limitation. At the same time one nearly never is true to what is remembered, and therefore, one often invents and /or changes the facts. Memory has, in addition, its rhythms and variable associations, which show different mental states from a pause -the pause of the one who thinks and remembers - up to the immeasurable vertigo that mental associations can become in certain states of madness. This to the degree that it impedes, breaks and puts speech in suspense, as well as logical discourse.

Wolfgang Scholz owns a painting called “About Love” which is the central part of a triptych, whose figure- apparently a man- is leaning on a white and red background and opens his mouth in a circular form to shout, the scream of the madman (see the novel “Aquí llega el sol” of Antonio Marimón, Collection “El Guardagujas”, Published by CONACULTA).    

In the third and last visit I made to Wolfgang Scholz’s studio –this time accompanied by him and by Isabel Beteta his partner- the stair of improvised trapeze artist had been replaced by another, more conventional one and not at all curvy. There, and after crossing the terrace, one could see leaning against the wall two large paintings similar to each other, recently painted; both really impressive. The title of one of them is “Two Hanging Figures”

(“Dos Figuras Colgadas”). The background is red on the lower side and black on the upper right, two figures hang upside down on a sort of iron tube or board, in such a way that the heads hang down and seem to be “about to crash “, says the painter. In another part of the canvas, about center, red mixes with white to create a clearer area which enriches the global image and gives restfulness to the pictorial content.

That clearer space looks like a blind window, closed to the exterior and at the same time insinuates it, transforming it into the clue to the enigma, because it makes reference to something that “is” perhaps in the depth of the back plane, or even beyond it, cutting it virtually.

Wolfgang Scholz tells us that he introduced that lighter area once when the sun was shining on that part of the canvas. Thus we are with a concrete fact (beautiful too), one that can be narrated, that comes from the painting’s environment, and that has the artist as its closest and most intimate observer.

But, I insist, we have that which is relatable, but this comes, in terms of testimony from outside the picture itself, and acquires a formal character inside the picture itself, which is something that increases not only the multiple possible meanings, but also the enigmatic condition of the intrinsic language of painting.

In fact that lighter area can open a field of semantics and at the same time make visible the fissure, of the limits between surrounding space and that which happens on the canvas.

¿But does this really happen? Or does the possible anecdote derive from the multiple and inevitably ambiguous, and therefore arbitrary meanings? Let us not forget the both springs –the ambiguous and the arbitrary - are constituents of neo-figurative painting.

In relation to this I would like to mention that Scholz production oscillates between the neo-figurative and abstraction, but is, closer to the latter. Thus, if one thinks of the centuries of figurative painting, we find here a reminder of symbols that can be recognized. Symbols, we should remember, were mostly absent, in the huge adventure of abstract painting that characterized most of the 20th century. In such a context, all the other, few, components of the painting that we are commenting on, are in this sense, equally ambiguous and arbitrary.

It is also so in relation to the fiction or making of his art, that Scholz’ production establishes a kind of narrative sketch, that can be read as a speculative derivation, a mere reference to the pictorial image.

In parenthesis: can one speak of a fiction when one is looking at an abstract picture? I would say no; I would say that it is more a matter of “artifice” in the context of the description of figurative form and figures, whether these are abstract or figurative; because abstraction, which is allowed, permits us to read in it, that which I called above one of its signs: that which is arbitrary, the non-reference and the liberty to envision and recreate. Here lies the true possibility to create (although the idea of creation in the sphere of aesthetics is always polemical), without losing what Roland Barthes calls the second reading, which is the inherent nature of criticism.

Thus visual abstraction can be analogous to poetic construction –if we keep in mind the different codes. In fact, as is known, artwork has no language of its own, when criticism is exercised on it. The methods of approach come from philosophy, history, sociology, literature, semiotics and psychology.

But let us return to “Two Hanging Figures” that we were commenting above. In strict terms, if we leave the title aside (which could be interchangeable, and look at the painting, be it seen by those who observe the picture, or by the privileged observer: the painter himself), there is nothing in it that can make us think that the figures hang from a metal or wooden tube: what we see is a thick line from which the figures hang and the good structural articulation. We don’t know either if the thick line is due to a formal configuration or if it is necessary for the meaning of the painting.

I believe that, aside from filling the composition’s balance of the painting it is essential because- I insist - it allows the figures to hang from it; that is, it allows for a first narrative reading of the picture, even if fragmented. As for the meaning, there are at least two possibilities:  Do the figures hang because they are being abused, or because they are trapeze artists in a circus? As is obvious both answers are pertinent.                                  

A few paragraphs ago the word “characters” was used for the figures. In strict terms, this word would be adequate for a realistic scene, which from a structuralist theory point of view, is composed by forms and figures. But, in fact, those characters or human figures are no more than suggestive spots that fit into the global proposal of Wolfgang Scholz’ work, as we already mentioned: his closeness to abstraction, and therefore being far (even though not completely) from that which is figurative. One could say that the black spot in the upper right corner of “Two hanging Figures” is threatening, as though it would cover with its impulse, the figures; and will blacken the whole surrounding.

Before finishing the analysis of this painting; (I would like to mention another one whose title “Two Figures in Space”, is very similar to the previous one; only the spacing of the figures within is different). I would like to point out that I see in Wolfgang Scholz a closeness, an inheritance of Georg Baselitz. Not that there is a direct influence of him that I know of in the paintings we are analyzing. Generally Baselitz uses neo-figuration, as well as expressionism and the inheritance from romanticism, with a different intensity than that of Scholz, who in some way contains the romantic-expressionist aesthetic in a way we will later describe.

I would say that this artist paraphrases Baselitz when he turns some figures up side down. On the other hand, the elder painter is more outspokenly dramatic than Scholz, and in that measure his pertaining to the historic German expressionism is also more accentuated.

Yet, I insist, both authors, each in his proportions (and I am not establishing parallelisms), fit into that long dramatic inheritance of expressionism born even before romanticism and constitutes one of the axis of German painting and culture.

The protagonist of these notes goes far from the romantic-expressionist Germanic tradition, without cutting with its inheritance altogether. I insist: if we think that the two figures could be either prisoners or circus trapeze artists, so the uncertainty generated by this double possibility, places Scholz painting in the scope of modernity, in this fissure with the illusion of what is being represented. On the other hand if we accept the first interpretation: the tragedy implied in it, we can see a relationship to Goethe’s Werther. I would say that Scholz production is conceptually born after the Werther, as well as after both the expressionist tendencies: the historic one and that of the eighties.

What I mean by “after” is: that there is skepticism and a recollection in the memory of the cultural reserves, that are at the base-or beginning point- of the style that can to be seen on the canvases of Wolfgang Scholz. This is not a minor enterprise, it is a working with that which lies in the deepest parts of our being, to simultaneously search and consummation of a unique work. This artist carries within himself the spirit of the German culture and existence, but elaborates each painting within his own code.

There is a canvas called “Fight in Yellow” whose surface is totally painted in yellow. The central figure, festively grotesque, hits with his foot another less well-defined figure. All of this with a good dose of humor, as though he were under a circus tent. The first figure looks like a clown, and the second one has taken on the role of an anti-hero, given his collage clothing, which makes him look like a “pariah”. Could it be  ¿El Quijote and Sancho Panza? Probably; in any case it is both playful and grotesque; if compared to the picture of the hanging figures we find again the double possibility of interpretation one tragic (prison-torture), the other playful (circus-trapeze artists.; and both interpretations are equally valid.

If post-modernity happens after an “incomplete project” as Habermas says, namely that of modernity; then we are, in fact working with left-overs (or fragments) and in this context –if there were is such- one may well ask how does one work with left-overs: ¿with what active conscience of death, with a map integrated to creation and to a life filled with signs of death? ¿Do we show death in our work directly or indirectly? ¿What is our concept of emptiness if we still are the protagonists or inheritors of modern society and culture? That which seems to be the reply to one of the infinite aspects that form 20th century culture is the use of the body as the material for experimenting with, either in direct form or in an elliptical one.

Perhaps we would never have imagined the negation of language understood as body-language that falls on to its own unknown interior suspecting an emptiness, both concrete and deviated, as in the Dadaist actions which change without annihilating; a concept of repetition, joined to a fusion between subject and object. The body becomes a motive to experiment with oneself visually, in an “expanded field” where culture and society intermingle.

Wolfgang Scholz works with these fragments or left-overs, but his activity goes at the same time beyond them, in a sense further and closer to a historic and cultural frame, so that this artist’s place is of a classical code within modernity.

One aspect that can exemplify this is –such as the image formed by only space and figure-that acquires suddenly a new twist: one of absolute lonesomeness or nearly absolute lonesomeness in which one can see as characteristic which the present time.

On the other hand Scholz softens these expressionist characteristics in various of his paintings, as though he were looking for a cease –fire, a warm place with sun where cultural and personal memory can move.

Still, and it is worth repeating, the unspoken signs of German inheritance, as a whole remain in this author’s artistic production.

With echoes of the Sturm und Drang, Scholz elaborates chaos according to the resources and aesthetic values of modern time. He uses for instance collage and mixed techniques; thus his surfaces are full of a variety of character traits – among which are the gestures and the thick paint surface – which are, to a certain degree a way of experimenting with space.

Let us now see what happens to the human figure in this artists work.

This painter and filmmaker recovers the human figure, and in doing so, he is reacting to one of the great proposals of modernity. The past century altered the contours and anatomy of figures until these nearly disappeared.

(The battle was headed as is well known, by cubism, as well as the fauve movement and the already mentioned expressionism. To these we can add futurism, el Suprematism and Dadaism. Such was the destructive impulse, and reconstructive one under new aesthetic laws that Picasso returned in the twenties to painting classical anatomies. This is also true for Francis Bacon, and in Mexico José Luis Cuevas, Francisco Toledo and Melecio Galván, all of them bring the deforming and transforming actions to extreme limits).

Back to Mr. Scholz production so that we can see where he fits in to this mosaic of the 20th century.

This painter sets the focus of his refined iconography on the human figure. There are no anthropomorphisms in his figures; instead we see slight sketches of something that looks like a spot and at the same time gives the spectator a feeling that these amorphous bodies are in fact human bodies. They are metaphorically men and women that in sleep-walk move through the picture space, or plunge into it quietly. In this way, space multiplies its functions. Sometimes it is nearly exclusively a support plane, other times it establishes complicity with the figures, acting like a mirror in which the figures look at, and play with each other, compete among each other, get near or move away from each other, insinuate intimate encounters in which eroticism unfolds, softly, insinuating, getting lost in the textures and transparent paint layers of the surface.

Surface is the bed, the place which softens the emptiness and takes on the role of a home; a home with light sparks that harbor and exposes that which is uncertain and veiled, house-home inhabited and made dynamic by the two figures. All these opposing traits come together in Wolfgang Scholz’ pictures; as does the restitution of the human figure that had been cast out of large parts of the 20th century painting

I would like to insist: the spots and/or stroke that represent the human figure in Scholz’ canvases question but do not degrade these figures. They are treated with a certain compassion, a playful rhythm, and despite their not being realistically portrayed, there is at times certain elegance. At the same time there is a return to the primeval when the figures are drawn – if we understand drawing as in the midst of a painting as a sketch.

Let us take another look at how these figures behave in space.

There is a painting called “The Couple” (“La Pareja”) whose background is yellow, in which two figures play with each other establishing a remote resemblance to realistic portrait. These “individuals”, are in fact more a scribble and mirror other scribble that surround them, in what could be their unique language; a language devoid of explicit content, and fixed in its strictly non-referential condition. There is in “The Couple” a coherence between the playfulness of the figures and the dynamism of the way in which they are drawn. There is, as well, in the collection of works that we are analyzing two horizontal paintings in which red is the predominant color, which are part of a process used to get to another canvas, a squarer one, whose white background holds two dark gray figures. These three paintings together complete the process, in which the treatment of the paint and of the image opens two cords of the poetic function. In the red canvases the color is thinly layered on and its modulations generate a lyrical feeling of the marriage of space and figures. On the other hand the white canvas with gray figures called “Africa 2”, insinuates more movement of the figures and these are clearly limited (hard edge); creating a contrast between the shapes and the background. In other canvases space acquires a certain thickness that, together with the posture and definition of the figures, suggests a discourse minimally inclined toward poetical prose. Thus the roughness with which the paint was placed on the surface, the contrast between black and white, and the dynamic position of the figures, seem to symbolize the coming together of prose (in the roughness la and poetry (given by the colors and the figures’ construction).

In the triptych “About love” figures have amputated arms (roughness). In the same painting, as in several of the works, one could say that the recourse of letting paint drip as happens, is one of the elements that add to the tonal and poetical gradations. Lastly, there is a feminine figure of the right side of the triptych that makes an arch with her back with her hair falling. It is, simply said and without further comment, a beautiful painting.

So once again I insist that there exists a tension in Scholz work between the tragic condition of deformity, and the refinement that gives a certain restfulness to the dramatic traits. There also is a complicity between figure and space against forsakenness which is also space for happiness.

17.11.2004

Lelia Driben, is an art critic and curator. Born in Agentina. Lelia Driben received her bachelors in modern literature and history from the, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina and did her post-graduate studies in Mexico City (UNAM). She was founding member of the Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL) de la ciudad de México; curator for the Cultural Institute of Mexico City. She has been an important art critic for several art journals, and teaches at the Universidad Iberoamericana modern art analysis. She lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico.

“The palm leaves move quickly like viper tongues,

into the throats of the red gladiolas,

And the moon’s- sickle laughs 

As tough furtively like a faun’s eye.

The world holds life embraced

In Saturn rays

And through dreams of the night

Emanates purpur …”

(from: Syrinxliedchen by Else Lasker-Schüler)

There we find love for fullness of color and at the same time highly dramatic poetry of a great poet –“her texts and poems are to me like German Haikus”. There is there a self-evident intimacy with literature, music, film, and dance in general, and there we find a life developed by many personal encounters with highly respected writers, painters, musicians, filmmakers, and choreographers. With some of these there has been, and continues to be a working together. This speaks of a continuous mutual enriching, and with it an expanding of ideas of arts that intermix, and this, ever since the beginning was felt as the basic feeling in the relatively narrow situation of the then East-Germany that still existed in Wolfgang Scholz’ childhood, and early artistic production. There weren’t many at that time that were self-conscious, nor many culture-creators known in the rest of the world, but they spoke the same language and pulled, without doubt, the same cords. This obviously led to a stronger feeling of belonging together and of solidarity.

An artist with such a breadth of personal artistic ambitions, someone who is in a striving search for clear goals in as many areas as painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film, directing, and choreography, and feels at home in all of these as Wolfgang Scholz, can be called, despite everything, a true rarity.

Even if now a days art and artists look again, and more than ever for each other; and even if nearly every artist that paints tries to prepare for these with drawings, or commonly tries to describe his sculpture (the three dimensional variant) in designs; and even if filmmaking artist also do photography –or the other way around- we do not find in this intensive, nearly excessive way of doing things that which we see in the Dresden-born Wolfgang Scholz, for whom working with the different expressive medias of art is such, that he can be called a  true exception. And yet isn’t life itself such, that it offers this many-fold scope, and that we can love and enjoy theatre, music, literature, visual arts equally? 

Why, then should a visual artist want to restrain himself, if he has access to, the talent for, and the desire to create in one, as well as in another, or even in several fields of art.

Recently a small book of poems by Paul Klee fell in my hands. Paul Klee was, as one knows, a musician, before he came to painting, and he didn’t shy away from the use of language, when it wanted to “come out” of him. Most of these small poems are to me really like a whole harmonious totality: “each time more bound with the sub-conscious image dimension” (P. K. in Schriften zur Form). They seem nearly like a seamless flowing from thought- fragments, of beautiful, masterly “splaterred” colors up to most bizarre ideas, and they are related to the equally lovely fantasy- filled paintings and drawings of Paul Klee. Yes, without a doubt we have there a strong link, a working together of the different art expressions. We can read in Klees diaries: “At the bottom, to be a poet, this recognition should not be for the visual arts, an obstacle! And if I were obliged to be a poet I would wish to be anything else!” And yet, this shows us clearly how differently diverse art expressions can be bound, in the hands of one and the same person.

Surely there is a huge amount of self- discipline in the elaboration of all the technical aspects that are needed to master such diverse areas of art, that also necessarily have to be worked at, from very distanced places, even if, from the point of view of content they add a lot to each other, and unite as well as strengthen each other. And of course not everyone, nor every artist, has it in him to realize such self-discipline.

“From early morning till noon, I work on developing multimedia pieces, in the afternoon till evening I paint and work on the art-objects, whereas filming, postproduction and rehearsal happen in concentrated spaces of time”, the artist explains, in reference to this and it is self-explanatory that such relatively precise time-planning is absolutely necessary. On the other hand, it must be that the next to each other, and with each other, of different work areas, also create a constant feedback and exchange. Starting from the constantly changing rhythms of the different stages of work: from the idea over the initial stage, the working-up of one’s strength and deepening into the work, until the satisfaction of experiencing the climax and, perhaps, the feeling of happiness when the work is finished, until –in our special case – beginning a new job in a totally different area. In such a case no work, not the first, the second nor the third will ever be boring. To be stopped, may happen at times, but it may be, even then, be of help to give other work some time, simply to get some distance and then, when certain ideas or steps have been further developed; when it has, so to speak, “ripened”, then go back to the interrupted work.

I suspect, that behind this undoubtedly not- everyday way of behaving, there is a reason: the artist’s strong desire, that all these things are perhaps related to one huge search in which different things are infinitely generated in different ways and forms to be expressed in images with a great variety of effects on the spectator.

Let us go through the different “roads”, the groups of work or expressions. We have the photo-series “Köpfe”(“Heads”), still done in Dresden, and the “Figuren” (“Figures”), the so called “Links- und Rechtsgesichter”(“Left- and Right Heads”), as well as the “Schwimmerfiguren”(“Swimmers”), all rigorously kept in black and white, in which the artist tried to “clarify things”, for himself as well as for others. Together with these appear the picture-series with the same themes as well as, shortly there after, the first experiences in film. The short film “Traum1” (“Dream 1”) is created in collaboration, for all his further work in film (still in the eighties: another feature-film as well as several documentaries) the artist proceeds first of all in an auto-didactic way. The materials for the films are self made, artistically so, and with painstaking details (a heart turning by itself, flowers loosing their petals etc.), all of these elements that like a red string reappear in different productions, are then mixed-or-bound with pieces of more or less well known films from the silent period, or with amateur shots of natural catastrophes, of expeditions and discoveries or strange features. Here too we find a search for the correct order of the “inner connections”, with the help of dramatic and beautiful, unquietening, intriguing, and sometimes even if their brutality and “trueness” are difficult to stand, it all strung together through images. Precisely images that include the unending fullness of life. Citations from literature or film-history, from the everyday and personal experience, from people, their fantasies, their fears or dreams, all this can become the carrying themes of such “narrations”. These are, of course all pictures in movement.

Since 1987, more or less, begins the work –in drawings and objects – with china paper, “a live” material, that makes sounds, is delicate and rough at the same time, and is always a material that “reacts”. Together with these elaborations he works on painting and film, and there are as well, the first performances, actions and regular exhibitions of all the work areas, often in their full intermixing.

Scholz starts to write screenplays in 1994 as well to do films for TV- these are guarantees for good entertainment that were mostly commissioned works; but also experimental films, participations in festivals and similar things- and above all he dares to do real multimedia stage pieces, which show the efforts of this artist, to put together single mosaic stones into a coherent whole, which in the last analysis ends up being most intensive and accomplished.

This much is certain, in a way all these works –photos, paintings, drawings on paper, the objects, the films and the screenplays, as well as the multimedia stage pieces, which as single pieces have each their autonomy - yet they still have something that ties them together, they have common elements that foster this, and it is due, in a great measure, if we look at it, to the creative process. Each of these individual works functions, in fact, as a part of a larger whole, a total artwork, so to speak. This signifies in itself the possibility to continue developing, always “in search for the inner image”, which has become for the artist Wolfgang Scholz a central issue. He stresses, again and again, that he isn’t about fixing the interpretations, rather that even during the working of a painting, there be room for ”chances that make things meet”. There is always a large space reserved, so that possibilities for the new may happen, for a new path.

And when we look again closely at these pages drawings, and note their delicate, and extremely reduced sign -likeness, held fast on such  “live-stuff” as china paper –or paper form Nepal, or even parchment- we find that the artist likes to take his materials form carefully collected ones such as used paper, that has its “own history”, on which he creates, with ink, china-ink, pencil and blood, whose purpose here isn’t the unchallengeable, unsettling - since for life such body secrets are supposedly necessary- but rather, its very materialistic features: a liquid that dries hard and fast and therefore contract extremely particularly on the soft base or support.

And when after this we look at the ever bigger paintings, mostly in strong sensible colors- red, in all shades, bright yellow, or deep blue “helium- coelin or Prussian-blue, bound together with an opaque and “definitive” black asphalt or bitumen; we see that these pictures have a “flowing” quality; specially if we consider the plentiful dripping down paint with its fascinating liquid traces. This is done with turpentine to soften up again the asphalt that might have gotten too hard, and thus “carry away” some of that which might have conquered too much space –or it is done with a lot of water.

After this we recognize in the pictures or on the paper again a central theme: the figure. It can be a single one, or two or three- very seldom more than that. But these figures are not really “figurely” in the sense of the intention of the painter, but they are rather forms, that appeared during the process of working the materials of the painting: forms, rather more likely structures, or outlines- or other layers such as sand, chalk. Again forms can appear from taking away of layers, materials, or color. This technique and its results allow the association to bodily notions such as skin. “Skinning”, is the term used by the artist for one of his early video-films to give an example –and with this we invest the works with something that is not randomly, but truly, alive; something nearly human, pictures with many layers, in which the important part is that which is underneath, inside, in the depth of the pictures, or better said, “works”, that because of this feature become three-dimensional.

This art is always about form, that becomes movement, it appears always as figures in movement, whether they appear in paintings, the drawings, the wire-figures, even in the boxes, the so called “portable art”.

Each time more, when we sink further into this artists work, and take into account, for instance, his strong affinity, his interest, and his professional involvement in the dance and choreographic world, we will understand more than clearly the origin of this connection. Most the pictures and drawings appear in a certain way, like painted dance. And the dance of the single figures, those that the artist personally put on stage appear again linkable to the bodies in movement form ”Movement, in Relation to Time and Space”.

Bodies related to sound and light with materials – with the over dimensioned mirror image photographs of body parts that invite to be duplicated on a wall of paper, which gives the feeling of being an impediment that expressed through a dancer that wraps herself protectingly up in a long strip of china paper, only to then rip it off desperately and into small pieces as though wanting to get rid of the feeling of being reduced (this in the last part of “Landscapes of Love”, 2001). Only after this does the body find rest, it evolves from an each time ever faster more “fluid” movements that comes into the body, then again a slowing down, doubting, searching; at least in this piece, waiting for the ”other” movement.  The body thus reacts to the “chance encounters of different perceptions”, out of which actually all life seems to be shaped.

Venice, November 2004

Agnes Kohlmeyer, is an art critic and curator

Born in Germany in 1954, Agnes Kohlmeyer studied Slavic studies and history at the Freie Universität in Berlin. From 1992-1993 she conducted research, at the Getty Center for the History of Art in Santa Monica - California, on German participation in the Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition (1895-1968). From 1998-99 she worked with Harald Szeemann as assistant curator for the 48th edition of the Venice Biennale of Art. She has curated installations for places such as the Castello of Udine. From 2001-03 she managed the Kunstverein of Ludwigsburg (Germany), acting as curator the exhibitions. She teaches “Trends in contemporary art” at the Faculty of Arts and Design University IUAV of Venice. She lives and works in Venice, Italy.