IThe Kunsthalle Gießen presents the most recent series of works by the artist Louisa Clement in the exhibition Double Bind from 07th May to 26th September 2021.

A living thing grows, procures food, reproduces, breathes, and undergoes change. Physical activities and mental states are mutually dependent and together shape the character of a human being.

In her current works being shown for the first time at the Kunsthalle, Louisa Clement departs from the familiar terrain of supposedly unambiguous bodily definitions and creates with her Repräsentantinnen (representatives) (2021) a kind of hybrid being that eludes explicit classification.

In doing so, she builds on her ongoing conceptual engagement with bodily transformation that she closely associates with the transformation of interpersonal communication. By using innovative technological processes, Clement creates a perfect likeness of herself, in the form of a doll. Mobile and sexually functional, the Repräsentantinnen not only bear the visage of their creator, they are even programmed to imitate Louisa Clement’s facial expressions. Fed by artificial intelligence, an algorithm-based character is created whose social component enhances through conversations with visitors to the exhibition. The more intensely the Repräsentantin is challenged by a counterpart in terms of content and language, the more the originally implanted system of thought blends with the external stimuli.

In her Repräsentantinnen, Clement questions the binary system of ‘I’ and ‘You’, of ‘I’ and ‘the Other’. This carries over to further concepts, and categories like the almost perfect self-portrait, doll and clone, human and robot increasingly dissolve even physically. She underlines the difficulty of a clear classification on the linguistic level too.

The term ‘double bind’ originates from communication theory and describes a so-called double message in which opposite statements and signals are conveyed through inflection, gesture or action, in addition to the associated effects.

A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition with texts by Nadia Ismail, Noemi Smolik, Susanne Regener, Ulrich Trottenberg und Thomas Trummer.

 
Louisa Clement studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe with Prof. Leni Hoffman and at the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf with Prof. Andreas Gursky, where she finished her studies in 2015 as a masterstudent of Prof. Andreas Gursky. Already in 2013, Clement received the Max Ernst Fellowship of the city Brühl, in 2016 she was awarded with the Förderpreis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen für Bildende Kunst and received, among others, the fellowship of Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and in 2019 of the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. Clement’s work has been shown in numerous international museums such as Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst Aachen (2019/2020 solo), Sprengel Museum Hannover (2019 solo), Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, De Pont Museum Tilburg, Netherlands, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Oslo, Norway, Museum Morsbroich Leverkusen, Huis Marseille Amsterdam, Netherlands, the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum Cologne (2017 solo) and galleries such as Konrad Fischer Galerie Düsseldorf (2018 solo), Gladstone Gallery New York, Sprüth Magers Berlin and Cassina Projects Milan, Italy.