Meyenburg & Andersson: Escaping Reality

An installation by Martina von Meyenburg with a sound installation by Martin Andersson

The visual artist Martina von Meyenburg (*1975), alumna of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, is presenting her monumental installation Escaping Reality for the first time in the facilities of Berlin’s Malzfabrik. In collaboration with the Zurich film director and musician Martin Andersson, Martina von Meyenburg creates a mythical site of escapism.

The forest, as an archetypal dream world from fairy tales and myths formed the starting point as a place of yearning and refuge. Four large-sized paravents resulted – each over two metres high; partition diptychs or triptychs made out of different materials – which form a construction that transports new perspectives on “the myth of the forest.” With its filigree silhouettes, each object stands for an aspect of the experience of the forest, while the paravents, casting shadows, are vehicles of separation and conjunction at the same time. The play with silhouette, deformation, reflection, light and shadow, exposure and concealment makes the forest come across as an abstract space, which seems familiar and strange, cosy and uncanny at the same time.

Martin Andersson’s sound installation provides the acoustic forest backdrop – wind seems to sweep through the trees, animal noises blend with spheric sounds. Just as von Meyenburg brings attention to the concealed, the gaps between things – “between trees,” “between places” – the apparent naturalness of the acoustic scenery is undermined through the subtle irritation of the strangeness of the purely artificially produced sounds. In “Escaping Reality” the viewer enters an intermediate realm, in which the familiar and strange, the revealed and concealed clash, and a balancing act between a secretive and eerie world of experience can be witnessed – between beautiful appearance and obscure depth. Martina von Meyenburg lives and works in Zurich and has participated in various international solo and group exhibitions.