In this video, gallerist Markus Kersting provides us with a tour of the exhibition The Naked City, artist Tracy Snelling’s second solo show with the gallery Krupic Kersting in Cologne, Germany. Works on display: Tenement Rising, Green Bar, Death Metal Room, Flaghouse Room 2, Orange Bar, Karaoke Bar, Office, Cheetah’s, and Clusterfuck 6.
Tracey Snelling: The Naked City at Krupic Kersting Gallery, Cologne. Exhibition walk-through and introduction by Markus Kersting, September 7, 2016.
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Complete video (9:51 min.):
Press text:
Worldwide more than 1.5 billion people live in extreme poverty. At the beginning of the year Tracey Snelling, Oakland/Berlin has built a smallscale-simulation of a Favela „One thousand Shacks“ (approx. 500 cm h) as a provoking exclamation referring to that topic. In this sculpture she unites the menacing cramped conditions of life at such places with astonishing aesthetics. The installation is accessible – via stairs – on its rear side from the bottom to the top.
For her DC-Open show with Krupic Kersting in September, Snelling works on a variation of „One Thousand Shacks“ named “Tenement Rising” which reflects her current life sphere in Berlin. The installation will be space-filling at approx. 360 cm height (status June, 2016: approx. 200 cm height). Countless anonymous residential units line up – one on/by another – granting apparently private insights into the loneliness of the residential machines in the edge districts of German and international cities.
By the application of miniature objects, photographs, lights, sounds and videos in her architectures, Tracey Snelling generates the illusion of a place, its people and their experiences. The cinematic picture often reveals „real“ life behind windows and doors. She grants voyeuristic insights and creates an atmosphere where the audience participates in fictional secrets.
Snelling’s works are part of the collections of numerous public and private museums and institutions (amongst other: Gemeentemuseum Helmond, Shanghai Zendai MOMA, Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Art Museums of Krefeld, El Museo de Arte de Banco De La Republica, Bogota, Stenersen Museet Oslo, Virginia MOCA, Microsoft Collection, Seattle, Marguiles Collection, Miami, Alain Servais Collection, Brussels).
Her latest installations were bought for exhibitions at the “Negev Museum” in Israel and for the “Historical Museum” in Frankfurt am Main. This year Tracey Snelling has been awarded with a prestigious „Joan-Mitchell- Foundation Grant“ and an „Artist Seed Grant“ by Artprize. Tracey Snelling currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.