BIENNIAL PROJECT
National Gallery
The work of Veronika Kellndorfer is aimed at a revision of our narrow understanding of modern architecture: a phenomenon enabled by the persistence of a few period photographs and drawings. In her photographs of Mies van der Rohe’s New National Gallery in Berlin—printed on sheets of glass at a scale that makes them architectural—Kellndorfer exposes the gap between our idea of the building and its actuality. Her photographs of the empty gallery at the beginning of a process of restoration focus on its raw materiality; the original steel, glass, and stone coexist with the new stacks of materials waiting to be installed as well as with the dust and dirt of the construction site. In her documentation of change—when the building was simultaneously unravelling and becoming—Kellndorfer offers us new ways to understand and reconstruct the history of this body of work.
BIO
Veronika Kellndorfer is a Berlin based artist whose work focuses on the representation of modernity through photography and installation. Her most recent solo shows examine the legacy of Lina Bo Bardi and Tropical Modernism in Brazil. These include Casa de Vidro at the Nasjonalmuseet Art and Architecture, Oslo, Norway; Tropical Modernism: Lina BoBardi at Christopher Grimes Gallery; Santa Monica; and Cinematic Framing, Casa de Vidro, Instituto Lina Bo Bardi, São Paulo. She has been a fellow, most recently, at the IKKM, Bauhaus University Weimar and held residencies at Villa Kamogawa, Kyoto, Villa Massimo in Rome and Villa Aurora, Los Angeles.
