metropolis m

In the early 1990s, like so many other artist of leftist leanings, Amelie von Wulffen moved to the former East Berlin. The prevailing cultural mood there was politically laden and the scene was one of critical, anti-capitalist debates and actions in the inner city. Working in this climate, Von Wulffen collaborated with a small group of like-minded artists to produce a series of politically-tinted animated films, for which she became widely known. After a while, however, she began to find the level of activism in these cooperative works excessive, and sought a new, more aesthetic way of communicating her ideas. She started then to incorporate the beauty of the city’s architecture that was rapidly rising around her into large ‘urban collages’. These were composed of her own photographs of Berlin, which she cut up and duplicated, and combined with painting.The walls and floor of her studio are draped with large paper works consisting of pasted-together, painted-over pictures of interiors and objects. She took many of the photos in her brother’s house (formerly the home of her grandparents) but there are other interiors as well. Von Wulffen drew my attention to a collage spread out on the ground that incorporated a photograph of a wall hung full of photos, all portraits. It was similar to a work she exhibited at Manifesta 5 in San Sebastian. The latter was also a composite work; the wall of the exhibition space was painted – somewhat decoratively – and hung with drawings based on old black and white photographs of her grandmother. Why does Von Wulffen use photos from her own family past in her work? Von Wulffen clarifies: ‘My grandmother intrigues me because she was a poet and an author. The photos of her are quite obviously posed. I found their heavy, profoundly melancholic character beautiful. The background shows a situation that has remained unchanged for many years. You cannot help but wonder about what period it was – probably during the war – and what was going on around that tranquil, natural setting depicted. It’s not so much my grandmother as such who interests me, but my relationship to the image. I believe it offers a more general validity than just my own, personal slant. The old objects I use as visual material are not merely family heirlooms but bearers of a culture, things which have stood the test of time. They are loaded with motifs that invite interpretation.’ The wall of portraits that Von Wulffen photographed is an existing situation in a café interior that dates from the 1930s. It was this interior that inspired her to use the style in which she re-drew the portraits of her grandmother. This is a way of working that seems to recur often in her work. Von Wulffen seeks various connections, both personal and collective, that implant a wider meaning in a given image. The atmosphere of her work is redolent of a vanished time, supplemented by predominantly subjective reflections, dreams and memories, and not immune to measure of nostalgia. Von Wulffen leafed through her documentation and showed me a series of architecture collages based on photos she has taken of historic buildings in Berlin. The pictures look as though they had been made decades ago but in reality they date from the last few years; the architecture photographed must be from the 1920s or 30s. A zeppelin floating in the sky next to a building is painted onto a photo. These works seem to be the outcome of a collective attitude towards architecture and the future. The works convey an atmosphere of nationalism. The prevailing ideology of the 1930s serves here as a symbol for the future of Berlin after the fall of the Wall. Do the architecture collages thus convey a more general narrative, as opposed to the more personal stories of the drawings? Von Wulffen: ‘I think that is probably true of the urban collages. But the collages of interiors are often based on my private surroundings, on the homes of my brothers and sisters or of my parents. They may also relate to spaces I have visited during a certain period, such as the Roman Museum, specific hotel rooms and swimming pools. It is more or less the story of the spaces I have encountered. You could compare it to the experience of space as communicated in film. In my earlier animations, it became clear to me that in film you can reconstruct a space from several existing spaces. This fascinated me, and it occurred to me that it was something I could reproduce in a drawing.’Von Wulffen has a solo exhibition at Galerie Gabriele Senn,Vienna, from 9 September until 31 October.