STUDIO: Sofia Duchovny

In the STUDIO, the Kunsthalle is showing works by Sofia Duchovny, this year's winner of the Rainer Wild Art Foundation Award. In her works, Duchovny uses flexible and lightweight materials to reflect on the conditions of artistic production and to negotiate the boundaries and transitions between private and public spaces and roles. Transparent tulle fabrics and fiberglass rods span embroidered surfaces whose overlays and invisibilities are also found in Duchovny's paintings.

Her visual worlds recall aesthetics of advertising photography and movie posters. In her extended practice of trailers, posters, and performances, her own artistic persona is almost over-performed in a humorously irritating way. In the exhibition, the artist's face peers out at the viewer from the background under various layers of color. Concealment and exposure, change of gaze and withdrawal of gaze are processed by Duchovny as visual opposites in her works. In the trailer for "Going Red", the protagonists, observed through binoculars, return the anonymous gaze and, using the means of masquerade, go from being observed to being acted upon.

Award of the Rainer Wild Art Foundation
Established in 2009, the Rainer Wild Art Foundation of Heidelberg-based entrepreneur, benefactor and art collector Prof. Dr. Rainer Wild honors art school graduates from all over Germany under the age of 35 with the Award, which was launched in 2015. The prize was previously awarded at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. At the request of the foundation, it will be awarded in Mannheim since 2020. The award is accompanied by prize money of 5,000 euros, which will be presented to the artist by the Rainer Wild Art Foundation.