„“ Thyra Schmidt & Christina Kral







Photographs and video by Thyra Schmidt
Thyra Schmidt & Christina Kral
Thursday, 27/04/2023
6 –10 pm
The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Frankfurt-based philosopher Angelica Horn.
About the artists:
The work of Thyra Schmidt is based on self-authored text compositions translated into various audiovisual and printed media, also conceptualized for site-specific installations in public space. The artist is interested in using language as an image- and space-creating device. In a constant change of perspective, she describes various interpersonal conditions to reflect social experiences.
Thyra lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.
She studied at the Braunschweig University of Art and the Düsseldorf Art Academy and has received several grants and international artist residencies (in Japan, Norway, Brazil, and South Korea). Her works have been shown in exhibitions and as projects in public space, among others, at the Photographische Sammlung|SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne; Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros, Hungary; Goethe-Institute Norway and ROM for Kunst og Arkitektur, Oslo; Kunstverein Paderborn; Neuer Kunstverein Wuppertal; KAI 10|Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf. For the extension of the Museum, Haus Opherdicke, Unna, Thyra has created a chronogram for the year 2021 as an inscription on the building. She also publishes individual series and projects in books of her own design, most recently: Über Diebe und die Liebe. On Thieves and Love. (2019, edition cantz/DCV, Berlin) and Rendezvous (2023, DISTANZ Verlag, Berlin).
Christina Kral is a visual artist based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her work encompasses sculptural assemblage, installation, and painting. For her assemblage works, she uses object fragments that she finds on the street and gives them a new form and legibility by arranging and recombining them. In her painting practice, she is primarily interested in experimentally reapproaching and further developing established techniques. She also draws on processes outside the visual arts, such as gardening or cooking, and transfers them into her painting processes. She combines aspects of her painting and assemblage sculptures in her installations, for example, by spatializing painterly compositions.
Christina started her artistic career in 2008 in New York with an artist residency at Eyebeam. Followed by residencies at Columbia University (Teachers College, New York), Bric Contemporary Art in New York, Guapamacátaro in Michoacán, Mexico, and Gasworks in London, UK. She received multiple grants to support her work, most recently from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in New York. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally at art festivals such as Cafa Biennial in Beijing, China, the Mercosul Biennial in Porto Allegre, Brazil, or at X-Initiative, a temporary experimental non-profit project in the former Dia:Chelsea building in New York, directed by Cecilia Alemani. Her work was included at exhibitions at the Bauhausarchiv in Berlin, the Ludwig Mùzeum, Budapest, Hungary, and at Kunstraum Kreuzberg in Berlin: Worin unsere Stärke besteht — 50 women artists from three generations of the GDR (German Democratic Republic).
Pictures from right to left:
Thyra Schmidt
From the series IHR: two photographs, silkscreen on paper, each 55.7 x 72 cm (framed) and video projection, text by the artist, 1:09 min, dimensions variable, 2022/2023
Christina Kral
Untitled: Acrylic on cotton, 60 x 60 cm, 2023
Untiteld: Acrylic on cotton, 70 x 70 cm, 2023
Untiteld: Acrylic on cotton, 70 x 70 cm, 2023
About the exhibition series:
In 2023 STUDIOSPACE Lange Strasse 31 is showing three dialogue-based short-term exhibitions. These exhibitions are subsequent to the exhibitions in 2022, 2020/21 and 2016/17.
Two artistic positions are shown in each case. As in a compartment, these "foreign" works meet for a limited time, enter into a dialogue, observe each other benevolently or reject each other. The juxtapositions are only be shown for one evening.
The exhibitions are kindly supported by Kulturamt Frankfurt am Main.
