Tabea Blumenschein
19.03.2022 –
04.06.2022
Opening
19 March | from 16:00
The exhibition can be viewed in the rooms at Weberstraße 51a.
Viewing by appointment: 0421 161 426 92 or info@k-strich.de.
Tabea Blumenschein (1952–2020) was active as an artist during the ’80s in the “Geniale Dilletanten” scene of West Berlin. From 1980 onwards she often contributed as a member to works by Die Tödliche Doris. Initially she had gained some renown through a series of experimental films, in which she took on the roles of director, actress, and costume designer. In 1975, together with Valeska Gert and Ulrike Ottinger, she produced her first film, Die Betörung der blauen Matrosen. Her most well-known film is Bildnis einer Trinkerin (1979). She worked on numerous Die Tödliche Doris super 8 mm film projects, including Das Graupelbeerhuhn (1982) and Alice und das Meer (1983). As a musician, she contributed to Die Tödliche Doris’s albums Unser Debut (1985) and Chöre und Soli (1983). She designed most of the group’s constumes and took part in performances on Helgoland, in Berlin, and in New York. Tabea Blumenschein also made a name for herself as a visual artist. In the late ’70s and in the ’80s she was part of a young alternative art scene in West Berlin, known as the “Geniale Dilletanten” subculture or era. Among other things, the artists harnessed their own brand of dilettantish primitive expression to reinvent the medium of painting, which had been superseded by abstract sculpture. Finally, she created a series of drawings of vibrators for Die Tödliche Doris’s album Reenactment (I) (2019).
For the first time since her death in spring 2020, her body of work will be recognized in a solo exhibition. Its focus is on work from the early ’90s, including images on panels, coloured pencil drawings, painted ceramics, as well as papier mâché sculptures. This broad range of media is characteristic of Blumenschein’s work. Distinctive features include bright colours, an anarchistic manner of painting, the use of art materials meant for children, and a preference for hybrid figures. The latter occupy a space suspended between all gender categories and can be considered precursors to contemporary queer culture.
Obituary by Wolfgang Müller in tipBerlin
Obituary by Ulrike Ottinger in the Tagesspiegel
Obituary by Oliver Koerner von Gustorf in the taz
Philipp Meinert in coversation with Gesa Ufer about Tabea Blumenschein on Deutschlandfunk Kultur