Fake & Fiction

Invisible Traces of Everyday Staged in Drawings.

Kunsthalle Mannheim's exhibition of Barbara Hindahl (b. 1960 in Duisburg, lives and works in Mannheim) titled Fake & Fiction reveals an artist whose multifaceted body of work rigorously reflects contemporary approaches to drawing. She selects her subjects from the detritus of everyday life, such as dust bunnies or shoe prints, which appear bewilderingly out of place on the white sheets. Hindahl's drawings encourage us to look more closely at her apparently haphazard yet artful and almost-abstract works of art. Whether drawing on defective graph paper or on defective digital printouts, Hindahl succeeds in making viewers doubt their own perception. The textures of her drawings emerge out of an interplay between visual accretions and erosions.

The accompanying exhibition catalog gives an extensive overview about the multifaceted approach Hindahl applies to contemporary drawing. A drilling that was applied by the artist one every cover makes every book a unique object and a must-have for bibliophiles. With essays by Reinhard Ermen and Thomas Köllhofer and a preface by Johan Holten.