Dazwischensein 6 Künstleringespräch: Katrin Bittl im Gespräch mit Dr. Ulrich Schäfert

In the organizer's words:

We cordially invite you to the

artist talk
Katrin Bittl in conversation with Dr. Ulrich Schäfert
Tuesday, July 16, 2024, 7 pm

Katrin Bittl deals with social ideals in her artistic work. She herself is a disabled woman. She would prefer to say that all people are functionally diverse. During her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, she created many self-portraits in various media: miniature paintings or video-documented performances. For the exhibition at DG Kunstraum, she has chosen a new approach. With the help of an AI, she has generated images that generate a Van Gogh painting from a personal photo from her archive. The AI was not able to recognize her body in the wheelchair as human, but instead created a plant from it, usually a sunflower. This is an unplanned continuation of the AI's work series 'My life as a plant'. Katrin Bittl develops the AI's conclusions further for a new work of her own, which she draws digitally. She creates a new plant creature, but with the structure of human skin.

Hermann Pitz on his student's work: "Katrin Bittl deals with the human body in a fantastic way. I also think it's particularly good that the pictures work independently of the political discourse. They don't necessarily need it."

Katrin Bittl (* 1994 in Munich) lives and works in Dachau. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich until 2023. In her work, she deals with social ideals and norms. She examines her own body as a woman with a disability using video, performance and animation. Intimate spaces are created through private objects and pieces of furniture, which she incorporates into installations and underline her biographical work. She locates her own body in the plant world and raises questions about the concept of care, care work and the family. In drawing and painting, she explores body standardizations that are manipulated and deconstructed by scaling them, painting over them or placing them in new contexts. She also works as a freelance author and writes on the topics of intersectionality of women with disabilities, art and inclusion. Most recently, her works were exhibited at the Galerie des Bezirks Oberbayern ('We Are Plants') and the Stadtmuseum München ([K]ein Puppenheim').

Interviewer: Dr. Ulrich Schäfert (*1973) is a theologian, art historian and trained church painter and is amazed at the breadth and depth that lies in the encounter between these fields. Schäfert is head of the Art Pastoral Department of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, based in St. Paul, and 1st Chairman of the German Society for Christian Art.

Click here for the exhibition: https://www.dg-kunstraum.de/dazwischensein-6-katrin-bittl/