As always on the occasion of the New Year, we will continue our Open Studios tradition, offering our visitors an insight into artistic production and current projects of Künstlerhaus Bethanien's artists in residence. The following studios will be open to visit on the evening of January 14, 2010: 


Wafae Ahalouch el Keriasti (NL), Dafni Barbageorgopoulou (G), Patrick Bernatchez (Québec), Cedric Bomford (CA), Soo Jung Choi (ROK), Martina Hoogland Ivanow (S), Joba Jonathan (NA), Ane Mette Hol (N), Pernille Koldbech Fich (DK), Michael Kutschbach (AUS), Thomas Lerooy (B)*, Dirceu Maués (BR), Tine Oksbjerg (DK), André Romão (P), Chua Chye Teck (SGP), Guy Zagursky (IL). 


* Thomas Lerooy's studio will host Iris van Dongen presenting:
"girl overkill #2"

Starting from 7 pm, we will also be organising another special sale of (almost) all the numerous publications that have emerged from the Künstlerhaus' publishing activity. (Studio 1)

!! Please take note of Künstlerhaus Bethanien's NEW, EXTENDED OPENING HOURS: starting from 2010, our exhibitions will be open DAILY, except for MONDAYS, from 2 to 7 pm !!

Openings + Open Studios: Thursday, 14th January 2010, from 7 pm, 1st + 2nd floor

SOO JUNG CHOI selects trivial things or their illu-
strations from various contexts of everyday life and paints copies of them; once they have been separated from any precisely definable context, she introduces them into her large-format acrylics paintings and collages as both structuring elements and artistic depictions. The motifs are lined up, repeated and transformed, whereby specific characteristics or a repeated use of colour gives the breathtakingly diverse painting an almost mathematically stringent foundation. Soo Jung Choi's techniques of painting and collage suggest an affinity to handicraft activities such as weaving, knotting or knitting.
Essentially, the exhibition "No Man's Land" comprises three groups of works: the two-part, large-format work "Floccinaucinihilipilification" is based on a net-like compositional structure that entices the viewer into the painting's labyrinth with a crowd of hundreds of small, colourful motifs, like small bait ingeniously laid out by the artist, and so causes him to become entangled in its 'net'. The second work complex, "Treasure Island", is a two-part, painting collage with pasted-on scraps of cloth, wool or coloured thread; its composition is based on the dot structure of reproductions showing actually existing stellar constellations, which the artist found in an atlas.
The presentation is supplemented by four ordinary commercial fishing nets partially lifted from the floor by nylon threads suspended from the ceiling. An almost rectangular space is thus formed and illuminated so that the net’s structure is duplicated as a shadow outline on the floor of the exhibition space.

Soo Jung Choi holds a fellowship from the Arts Council Korea and is a guest at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in the context of our International Studio Programme.

Soo Jung Choi - "No Man's Land"
15th January - 31st January 2010, Studio 2
Tuesday - Sunday, 2 - 7 pm
Opening: Thursday, 14th January 2010, from 7 pm

THOMAS LEROOY's drawings and sculptures involve a creative game with citations and reminiscences from art history. The biting irony that is occasionally noticeable in Lerooy's technically ex-
tremely accurately realised drawings and his sculptures arises from a clever use of highly symbolic objects such as skulls, playing card motifs or skeletons, which he combines into scenarios that often appear macabre: in Lerooy's works, for example, roses bloom from skeletons, centaurs pose in the manner of lap dogs, and putti sporting death's heads rather than angelic curls cavort in a kind of danse macâbre, provoking the viewer by holding him captive somewhere between attraction and revulsion. By employing a succinct formal language and confronting historical patterns with familiar symbols of transience and decay, he distorts the traditional, original meaning of a monument with its postulate of eternity and so lends it a bitter-ironic aftertaste.
The central piece in the exhibition "Something In Between" is a sculpture of two putti, quite literally 'caught' in a loving embrace in a glass case; Lerooy creates a dialogue between them and several drawings exposed, thus investigating the multiple layers and am-
bivalences of human emotions and relationships, the permanent "in between" of our position in life, and in particular the role of the artist as a 'mediator' who represents these emotions.

Thomas Lerooy holds a fellowship from the Flemish Government in Brussels and is currently a guest at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in the context of our International Studio Programme.

Thomas Lerooy - "Something In Between"
15th January - 31st January 2010, Studio 3
Tuesday - Sunday, 2 - 7 pm
Opening: Thursday, 14th January 2010, from 7 pm