Julia Bünnagel
Between the stars
25. Juli – 15. August 2010

The artist Julia Bünnagel presents her sculpture "Zwischen den Sternen" (Between the stars) at Lichthaus Arnsberg. The title refers to the view upwards: the work changes with the natural course of the day and reacts to the nature and architecture of the building.

Bünnagel rigorously and precisely develops a complex geometric form without a centre, beginning or end. Black, high-gloss lacquered panels are mounted in staggered heights and depths, horizontally and vertically, on a white construction. Illusory lines of the sculpture dissolve into the striped façade and thus continue into the architecture of the building. The interplay of light and shadow, lines and surfaces, filling and empty spaces requires movement and a change of perspective in order to experience the work in all its complexity.

"Between the Stars" is an expansive sculpture with a strong physical presence, but which also conveys a sense of transparency and lightness. This feeling stems from the openness and dynamism of the construction, which does not consist of a static mass but forms several living spaces in between. The black surfaces and their inner projections manage to refract, reflect and partly appropriate the architecture of the light house. The reflections create a new field of tension of entanglements and relationships between the futuristic sculpture and its historical surroundings.

Julia Bünnagel is interested in urban architecture and utopias from Babylon and Tatlin to science fiction. Her sculpture could also be seen as an imaginary design for a higher city or floating space station, where weightlessness requires new models of thought and imaginary power and where one can probably live, work and love "between the stars".

Julia Bünnagel was born in Haan in 1977. After studying sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, she lives and works in Cologne.