2014 Catalogue Archive

German-Iranian artist Bettina Pousttchi has explored notions of architecture and public space through a diverse range of work that includes photography, video, installation, and sculpture. Pousttchi has incorporated crowd-control barricades and bollards into her sculptural works, taking their use as dividers of public and private space, and transforming them into emotive and fantastic objects. In Konrad, Pousttchi bends and arranges a trio of street bollards. The powder coated surface softens the hard metal objects, and Pousttchi’s composition anthropomorphizes them, turning them into a Giacometti-like grouping of figures. Pousttchi has had solo shows at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Kunsthalle Basel, and Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, where in 2009-2010 her much-acclaimed photo installation Echo was displayed on the façade. She also exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2009. Her work was the focus of a Nasher Sculpture Center Sightings exhibition earlier this year.