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B-Part Exhibition

LAURE CATUGIER
BAUTOLERANZ
September 16 - October 30, 2021




The current solo exhibition at "B-Part Exhibition" takes up the theme of "building tolerance". The French, Berlin-based artist Laure Catugier (*1982) applies this term from structural engineering, which regulates the encounter of different building materials, to her large-format photo collages. Architectural elements that we perceive as standardized and used globally are brought into unusual contexts by Catugier and thus visually analyzed. In the space-related and partly installative works, a new view of architecture of the present and the future thus also emerges.

In the building industry, the term "building tolerance" is understood to mean a permissible deviation from a guaranteed value. It is only by adhering to such tolerances that the intended functions can be fulfilled during the production and assembly of structural elements. Construction tolerances are particularly important when different construction elements or materials come into contact with each other.

At the site of the future "Urban Center Am Gleisdreieck", a place where various actors meet, building tolerance now has an effect on the inside and the outside of the current and planned architecture: as the title of Laure Catugier's current solo exhibition at "B-Part Exhibition", "building tolerance" is clearly communicated to the public on the outside - on the exhibition banner in front of the "B-Part" - while on the inside, for this very public, the boundaries of conventional perception are artistically deviated from:

The Toulouse-born, Berlin-based artist uses photographic material in the exhibition space to test how architecture connects with an outside and how a new view of the built environment can emerge by alienating familiar codes of perception. Catugier's black-and-white photo collages, printed in large format on poster surfaces, show architectural elements (exterior walls, stairway steps, windows, etc.), which she depicts in such a nested manner and combines in such a striking way that it only becomes clear at second glance where the boundaries of the individual motifs run: Is the gray sky there actually a firewall? How can the imaginary shadow of the garages appear here so naturally on the neighboring motif? Are there actually many different buildings? Is it only one or even one per single motif?

The reason for this confusion of perception lies in the fact that Catugier exclusively depicts (post-war) architectural elements that we perceive as standardized, which could be (almost) anywhere in the world - and were actually taken (almost) anywhere in the world by the artist. These perspectives on global architecture, created with a sharp eye, are supported by the fact that Catugier plays with the scales throughout, as well as by the fact that no people are to be seen in her photos, and that what is depicted in her always humorous play with geometry in space seems so strangely model-like, yet distinctly sculptural. Here it becomes vivid that the artist, in addition to her master's degree in art and design, has also completed a bachelor's degree in architecture.

Catugier's collages at "B-Part Exhibition" are flanked by two works from her "Balconing" series, which gently transfer the technique of photo collage into the three-dimensional and thus focus on the motif of shadow play, as well as by a video work ("Split"), in which the artist uses the means of computer drawing to open up another guessing game about dimensions, surfaces and spaces, basic elements of pictorial representation and conditions of architectural assertions.

The B-Part Exhibition space accompanies the future development of the Urbane Mitte Am Gleisdreieckwith artistic autonomy and thus at the same time enters into a dialogue with the overarching themes of the overall project - forms of New Work, Co-working, Culture and Sport - and creates synergies between artistic, cultural and social approaches. The artistic director of the B-Part Exhibition is Rüdiger Lange (loop - raum für aktuelle kunst).