Solo show: Kerstin Drechsel - Posterbox_Teil 1 (over)

	© Kerstin Drechsel, oil on canvas, 2004, Courtesy Laura Mars Grp.

Laura Mars Grp. Laura Mars Grp. Sorauer Str. 3 10997 Berlin Germany (city map) Send E-mail tel +49 - (0)30 - 610 74 630 www.lauramars.de

POSTER_BOX Teil 1 is the first part of a joint project by Berlin-based artists Kerstin Drechsel and Ursula Döbereiner inspired by images that awaken yearnings and are reproduced millions of times over on posters: images depicting sunsets, love, horses, cars, music, stars, exotic landscapes, martial arts and friendship. Just as posters, as a common aspect of teenagers' rooms, give an idea of how one can "furnish" one's reality, so does POSTER_BOX Teil 1 offer a multitude of suggestions and alternatives to creating one's own reality.

In Drechsel's work, the investigation of everyday culture, artistic production and individual taste is orientated towards the rhythms of music, films and daily occurrences. Like Döbereiner's drawings, which will be shown at LAURA MARS GRP. in July, Drechsler's work uses images from the Internet, magazines and books, as well as her own snapshots, in order to transform them into an archive of constantly recycled wishes, dreams and memories, Captured personal moments and adopted motifs combine in her paintings with the vague promise of fulfilment, desire and adventure. Snapshot of female friends, lesbian parties, concerts or beauty contests turn up alongside details of parts of bodies, pieces of clothing, or pornographic motifs. Without Pathos, the artist depicts intimate moments of the utmost concentration, which are associated with intoxication, addiction and sexual ecstasy. "It's a girl's world": the women in Drechsel's paintings are not looking for their next kick, but rather devote themselves, careless and self-absorbed, to their pleasures. They snort cocaine, flirt, wrestle, hang around or urinate on the floor, legs spread wide. Although at first glance, the motifs appear adult and occasionally raw, Drechsel casts them in soft pastel tones, associated with dreams of femininity: powdery colours, nuances of pink and glowing yellow, which soften the hardness of the contours and allow the spaces and bodies to become surfaces for projections of desire and contemplation.