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backCharlotte Posenenske: Work in Progress
MACBA | Museu d'Art Contemporani de BarcelonaImage: Charlotte Posenenske, Pintura reticular Grid Picture Rasterbild 1957. Colección Markus Michalke
Charlotte Posenenske (1930–1985) was born Charlotte Mayer in Wiesbaden, Germany, to a Jewish family. She studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart with Willi Baumeister, who introduced her to modernism and Soviet Constructivism.
Posenenske’s works can be described as oscillating between Minimalism and Conceptualism, participatory art and performance, social practice and institutional criticism. Using construction materials, serial repetition and industrial manufacturing, Posenenske developed a form of mass-produced Minimalism that addressed the social and economic concerns of her time, circumventing the art market and rejecting established formal and cultural hierarchies.
Her modular sculptures enabled the ‘consumer’ – the curator, viewer or owner – to decide and change the configuration of the installation according to their preference, thus surrendering some of the artist’s authorship and opening up the work to others. In a statement published in Art International in 1968, Posenenske asserts: ‘The things I make are variable, as simple as possible, reproducible. They are components of a space, since they are like building elements, they can always be rearranged into new combinations or positions, thus they alter the space. I leave this alteration to the consumer who thereby again and anew participates in the creation.’
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