ANDRÉ SOUSA’s spatial installations incorporate a huge range of objects: minimal sculptures, detached advertising posters, empty beer bottles, photographs of car stickers or graffiti slogans, and drawings in the style of “stick men”. In his installations, the unspecta-
cular objects – which Sousa finds in the cultural en-
vironment of each place where he is living – are combined with the aid of a cleverly-calculated strategy into a complex network of meanings and references.
Sousa has constructed two large wooden sculptures reminiscent of shop counters across the architectonic diagonals of Studio 2; they function as symbolic, reflecting axes separating public space from the exhibition space. Numerous small-format oil paintings, which Sousa displays on one of the counters, resemble an anthology of abstract painting and play with the concepts of axis and centre. On the second counter, he arranges found objects from the environment in Kreuzberg so that they are given completely new meanings. Like at the till in the local supermarket, André Sousa has fixed angled mirrors to hang from the ceiling above the wooden counter. They show the viewer of his installation quite clearly that nothing is concealed behind the art object: the artist is playing with his “cards on the table”.
He sees himself not so much as an “author”, but as a mediator and organiser of highly diverse pictorial reper-
toires within an apparently infinite network of meanings and references.
André Sousa holds the João Hogan Fellowship from the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon in the context of our International Studio Programme.

André Sousa – "FABEL (Fábula/Fable)"
10 – 26 July 2009, Studio 2
Opening: Thursday, 9th July 2009, as from 7 pm

At the event of the exhibition opening on 9th July 2009, we are delighted to present a further round of OPEN STUDIOS. You are warmly invited to stroll through the studios, discover new artistic projects, and enter into conversation and discussion with international artists.

The following artists will be opening their studios between 7 pm and circa 10 pm on 9th July:
Wafae Ahalouch el Keriasti (NL), Dafni Barbageorgopoulou (GR), Manolo Bautista (E), Patrick Bernatchez (Québec), Rossella Biscotti (I), Soo Jung Choi (ROK), Romeo Gongora (CA), Ane Graff (N), Sara Hughes (NZ), Jost Kirsten (NA), Tomasz Kowalski (PL), Michael Kutschbach (AUS), Christodoulos Panayiotou (CY), Björn Perborg (S), Thomas Lerooy (B), André Sousa (P) and Guy Zagursky (IL).

Special sale of publications by Künstlerhaus Bethanien:
Due to the lively interest shown at our last sales event, on the evening of the opening of “FABEL (Fábula/Fable)” we will be offering another special sale of (almost) all publications that have been produced through the Künstlerhaus’s publishing activities. Again, you will have the opportunity to acquire catalogues and books including contributions by well-known authors at extremely reasonable special prices.
The special sale is only on 9th July 2009 (Studio 3, as from 7 pm).

ANE GRAFF is a passionate draftswoman. She practises drawing as an extremely time-consuming, almost meditative process that centres on her contemplation of the poetry of scientific research and the nature of matter per se. Ane Graff’s fine drawings with meticulously realised details use graphite pencil to reveal the surfaces and structures of organic matter – birds’ feathers, divots of turf, a tree’s branches and twigs – or the coral-like ramifications of natural silver and different types of stones. The artist’s interest has been attracted by multiform layers of broken slate in particular. In her drawings, Graff likes to develop the similarity of structures from completely different fields of nature.
Older works by Graff echo still-life paintings by 17th century Dutch artists, in which the forest floor is depicted as the habitat of evil forces – often embodied by reptiles or insects –, combined with symbols of Christian redemption.
In her more recent works, Graff has advanced from capturing stones and other natural forms on paper, and also collects them outside and presents them in the form of sculptural ensembles. Thus, for example, she has laid out a huge number of fine and even finer slate fragments to create a large-format floor work – a futher development of the graphic idea that recalls, in this form, artworks of Land Art and yet, if one were to observe the installation from high above, it would re-adopt the aspect of a drawing.

Ane Graff holds a fellowship from the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) in the context of our International Studio Programme.

Ane Graff - Sliding
14th – 30th August 2009, Studio 2
Opening: Thursday, 13th August 2009, as from 7 pm

JOST KIRSTEN’s work investigates diverse forms of abstraction and repetition in art. In his installative presentations of work he brings together simple sculptures reminiscent of Concept Art or Minimal Art, which are often made of natural materials and enter into creative dialogue with their direct environment. Kirsten’s preferred material is wood, which he sometimes combines experimentally with stone. Fire is one element without which Jost Kirsten’s artistic oeuvre would seem incomplete. On the one hand, the artist makes it into a ‘tool’ with which he processes wood, paper, canvas or stone in a methodical way; on the other hand, it becomes an ephemeral artistic medium in itself, and its repetitive traces are left behind on the carrying media in patterns of smoke or soot or ‘captured’ between two panes of glass by the artist.
In his home country Namibia, Jost Kirsten prefers to use working materials customary in that country, such as the dolf wood from the local mukwa tree, or if the wood is rare – as is quite often the case in this country dominated by deserts – he makes use of abandoned cable drums or old wooden cases into which he drills thousands of small holes. The light shines through these to the viewer as an ornamental pattern, and he works on the wood methodically using candles, a gas burner or cooker hotplates.
At Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Jost Kirsten is showing a selection from his latest works, which were produced during his twelve-month residence in Berlin.

Jost Kirsten holds a fellowship from p.art.ners Berlin-Windhoek GmbH in the context of our International Studio Programme.
p.art.ners Berlin-Windhoek gGmbH are sponsored by Air Namibia, Kalahari Sands Hotel & Casino and the foundation Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin.


Jost Kirsten - Clearing
14th – 30th August 2009, Studio 3
Opening: Thursday, 13th August 2009, as from 7 pm