Archive: Kerstin Cmelka: Non-Identical Twins
The first individual exhibition of the new KUNST RAUM NOE will be dedicated to Kerstin Cmelka. Non-Identical Twins centers around apparently identical gestures and mimics, their origin, their changings in time, their roles of gender and power. Born in Lower Austria, Kerstin Cmelka who has studied in Frankfurt, covers all by herself an enormous variety of different media: montages, films, photos and assembling constructions serve as basic means for her work aimed to tap and reflect the collective memory.
Cmelka uses already existing pictures and materials extracting them from the original context for further elaboration. For instance by transforming them into mimical pairs of twins and hybrids, by this juxtaposition revealing their existing differences; thus the starting point for a new story emerges.
Filmstills and photos of Truffaut and Bergman taken during film productions show these legendary movie directors while suggesting gestures in a mimical dialogue with the actresses – thus Cmelka creates a new intimate context.
The separation of the cut outs and the manipulation of the supposedly authentic originals unfold identical structures and underline the existing abyss between picture and photo.
Icon, Dummy, Monster
The awe-inspiring „star“ of the exhibition is a reproduction of the lost and missing puppet of Alma Mahler. This puppet was originally produced in 1915 by the artisan Hermine Moos upon order of the painter Oskar Kokoschka who intended to use it as a model for his paintings, serving at the same time as a fetish object and copy of his former lover.
The Icon Alma Mahler, her Dummy and finally her Monster. Kerstin Cmelka is eventually looking out for a third identity, in this process creating a cabinet of the absurd, dismantling - at the same time reviving and newly composing the myth of the original.
