Painting can appear everywhere. On a canvas, a vase, a product description, a towel. It is the way of seeing and picking things out, that makes it to a painting.
About my work
In my artistic work I am looking for possibilities to visualize those moments of awareness to define something as painting and tease it out. Subconsciousness and sometimes surreal views helps things to bubble up beneath the surface. Landscapes appear as brush strokes, fabric patterns as abstract paintings, many points merge into a figurative picture. The questions about content and medium, about the space of illusion and the surface are renegotiated. They are not questioned as theoretical questions, but rather with much joy of playing and laying out wrongly tracks.
I use pillowcases as picture carriers, mould stains become paintings.
You are in an imaginary room that only looks three-dimensional, but marks in some places that it tilts back into the surface, things do not exist in space.
This vexatious game between flatness and space, between detail and general view and between small things that appear on the canvas very big, shows that I understand painting as a possibility to rebuild modelled reality, and to recreate, to change it into the language of painting.
Narrations, irritations and antagonisms are articulated.
Paintings happen to me. Figurative elements can appear, but don't necessarily need to. Any kind of colours can be used. All of them have a personal story and a starting point. Everything can float into the work that I met visually. It can be inspired by mass media images, photographs, texts, philosophical and or psychological impacts that I am meeting in everyday life. I am transforming those things into a visual language and while I am painting them they themselves want things from me, to been changed and want me to pull them in the direction they want to be. All of them together form a community or society that I call the Welttheater. If someone of them is put out of the context of the other ones, it will be seen totally different and will confront the viewer with his personal system of categorisation.
CV
Meike Kuhnert
* 1985 in Munich. Lives and works in Berlin.
2014
Foundation of the project space stay hungry in collaboration with Michel Aniol, http://stayhungry-projectspace.de/
Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt
an independent program for postgraduate visual artists, Berlin
2011-2012
master student of Prof. Antje Majewski
Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, Berlin
2010
study fine arts at Chelsea College of Arts, London
2005-2011
study fine arts at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee
painting department, diploma
Awards and Grands
2021
research grant for 'stay hungry' by Berliner Senat, Berlin
2020
Arbeitsstipendium, Berliner Senat, Berlin
2019
BBK studio program
2018
Auszeichnung künstlerischer Projekträume und Initiativen
for 'stay hungry'
Berliner Senat, Berlin
2017
Nominated for project grant KunstKommunikation
Kunsthaus Kloster Gravenhorst, Hörstel
2014
Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt, Berlin
2012
Financial support of ICHICHICH exhibition by Mart Stam Gesellschaft
2011
Mart Stam Preis
Exhibitions (selection)
2022
upcoming June, Fabrikraum Wien
2021
And if my thought dreams- could be seen, Stroux, Berlin(S) ;
Pleasure Garden Revamped, stay hungry as part of Berlin Britzenale, Berlin;
gemütlichkeit, project by Dario Orphée La Mendola and Mario Margani
Berlin-Sizilien (online);
Suturo Berlin 2021, Suturo, Berlin (online);
Oblivion, The Holy Art, London (online);
2020
It's Now, Galerie Alte Schule Adlershof, Berlin;
Weißensee Kabinett, Brot Fabrik, Berlin;
2019
Neck of the Woods, Spoilers, Berlin;
Isolae, Dintorni, Palermo;
PrettyBlueBatch, Treptower Ateliers e.V., Berlin;
Second Life, Sangnual Lap, Bangkok;
Anonyme Zeichner*innen archive, Kunsthaus Kannen, Münster;
Stadt, Schoeler, Municipal Gallery Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Berlin;
2018
Nebbia, Garage arts platform, Enna, Sicily.
2017
Ausblick!, Project grant KunstKommunikation 17,
Kunsthaus Kloster Gravenhorst, Hörstel;
Age of Ideas, Freiraumfestival, Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, Leipzig (S);
Ideenwerkstatt, presentation of project Genius Loci, Kunsthaus Kloster Gravenhorst, Hörstel;
Business as usual, Kreuzberg Pavillon, Berlin;
Swimming Tools, stay hungry, Berlin (S);
2016
Orientations in Time and Space, stay hungry, Berlin (S);
Solar Dreams, Möbelhaus von A-Z, Berlin (S);
Secret Garderns, site of the former St. Thomas Cemetery, Berlin;
The Visionaire, Feuerwache (Alt), Berlin
2015
#TABS, LageEgal, Berlin;
Artists Sweethearts, Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Dortmund;
Pure Fruits, stay hungry, Berlin;
2014
HELIUM – Goldrausch 2014, Projektraum Flutgraben e. V., Berlin;
Paradies Neukölln, stay hungry, Berlin (S);
POLYEDITION#1/– Spirits –, stay hungry, Berlin.
2012
ICHICHICH, Leinestraße 21, Berlin;
Ausgerechnet Freitag der Dreizehnte, curated by Frank Wagner, Oranienplatz 17, Berlin;
PRESUME, Mart Stam Grand, projectspace of Kunstraum Kreuzberg/ Bethanien, Berlin.
2011
Tschüss mein Schatz, Atelierhaus Monbijoupark, Berlin
2010
Vitrinen, Foyer of KHB, Berlin
2009
Plötzlich, Uferhallen, Berlin
Holt die Ferne Heran!, Atelierhaus Monbijoupark, Berlin
Let's Go East, Galerie E105, Bonn
Contact/Impressum
Meike Kuhnert
Studio
Porschestraße 11, 12107, Berlin-Mariendorf.