ROME.- Galleria Marie-Laure Fleisch inaugurates its new exhibition space in Via di Pallacorda with Spatien, the first solo exhibition in Italy of the German artist Katharina Hinsberg.

The premises of the new gallery, reorganised and remodelled by Lazzarini Pickering Architetti, are located in the Campo Marzio area of Rome in spaces which were once the stables of Palazzo Cardelli. Commissioned in the 1500s by the humanist Jacopo Cardelli to house his family residence, the restoration and decoration of the building was entrusted to the architect Francesco da Volterra and completed by Gaspare Guerra, with further additions made in the 1800s.

Katharina’s artistic research is a reflection on the drawing process itself focusing on its original significance. The artist has chosen paper as a preferred expressive medium and her work starts from the straight line. Since completing her studies in Munich and Dresden, Hinsberg has concentrated on experimenting into different artistic applications of the line; a graphic form expanding progressively to free itself from any constraints of the paper support to dialogue with architecture.

The inaugural exhibition of Katharina Hinsberg consists of a group of works on paper and a site-specific installation.

In some works on show, Katharina has hand-traced a series of red pencil lines, some of which are cut; the lines create an abstract drawing in contrast to the geometry of the sheet of paper. In other works, the paper is handled like a sculptural medium and is perforated, incised and punctured to enhance its inherent plasticity.

The large installation Spatien – commissioned specifically for the new exhibition spaces – also lends its name to the entire exhibition. The word, univocally untranslatable in English, usually means a series of intermediate or in-between spaces. The installation is made from a series of thread-ike spatial “intervals” of orange-red tissue paper cut-outs suspended from the ceiling one by one. Presented for the first time in Germany in 2010 at the Kunstverein in Würzburg and again in 2011 at the DKM Museum in Duisburg, the installation takes on a new form in every new setting and is conceived ad hoc for each exhibition. A rain of colour pervades the space, but without obstructing the visitor’s view. It visually fills up the volume that it occupies, but contemporaneously oversteps its boundaries by going beyond the constrictions of the walls, it propagates itself from floor to ceiling without any interruption.

Between the lines, distributed and positioned in fieri by the artist in the set-up phase, one finds a chaotic terrain of tangled and knotted groups of paper threads which form a meandering passage inviting the visitor to enter and walk along: following the artist’s pathway, the viewer penetrates the installation and is confronted with a new spatial perception which challenges any habitual references.

Tackled with a systematic approach by Hinsberg, the drawing process becomes a means of conceptual exploration. Guided by rationality and intuition, the artist develops its transformational qualities by creating a fragile and mutable map of space and thus, is able to analyse the notions of boundaries and tension between the artistic genres: the lines of the drawings become tangible as they take on a sculptural, three-dimensional form, becoming true installations while maintaining their original graphic nature.

Katharina Hinsberg (Karlsruhe, 1967) lives and works at the Raketenstation Hombroich in Neuss. She studied visual art in Munich, Dresden and Bordeaux. From 2012, she was the Artistic Director of Hombroich: Summer Fellows at the Insel Hombroich Foundation.

Among the solo shows: Kunstmuseum Baselland, Basel (2015); Museum Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern (2015); Feldern (Farben), Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf (2014); Feldern (Die Teile und das Ganze), Kunstverein, Ulm (2012); Spatien, Museum DKM, Duisburg (2011); Streifen, Landesgalerie, Linz, Austria (2008); binnen, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (2008); Perceiden, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2005); Lichtes Maß, Kunstraum Düsseldorf (2004); Frieze of Fricatives, The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas (2000). Among the group shows: Kunstverein, Leipzig (2015); Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg (2015); Weltreise, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow (2014); Linie, line, linea, Museu de Arte Leopoldo Gotuzzo, Pelotas, Brasil / Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito, Ecuador / Museo Nacional de Arte, La Paz, Bolivia / Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogota, (2011-2014); Aus Passio, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (2012); Rasterfahndung, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2012); Cut, Kunsthalle Hamburg / Kunstmuseum Kärnten, Austria (2010-2011); Die Gegenwart der Linie, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2009); Decodierung: Recodierung, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria (2000).

In 2013 she was awarded the Women’s Art Prize of North Rhine-Westphalia and in 2014, the Helmut Kraft Foundation Art Award.