In May 2025, Haus am Waldsee is presenting a comprehensive solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Nina Könnemann.
Abb. oben: Nina Könnemann, Knapping: Haben Frauen Steinwerkzeuge hergestellt?, 2024
In her work, Nina Könnemann is interested in the way people act in public space and focuses on marginal environments, everyday behaviour and subcultural dynamics. She precisely and astutely documents movements that are characterised by subliminal social conventions. Her camera is often dedicated to the transition zones of social events: Places that lie on the fringes of festivals, demonstrations, sporting events or other mass events, as well as the traces that people leave behind there. Könnemann condenses these initially inconspicuous moments into cinematic reflections on unnoticed social mechanisms, creating portraits of the present based on unofficial narratives.
Under the title Blocks, Nina Könnemann is showing a new series of video works on the ground floor of Haus am Waldsee that were created as part of a decentralised, collaborative production process. Without a predetermined dramaturgy, the images unfold in real time – for example in the final moments of a marathon or during the final lift rides of a ski season. Shooting, selection and editing are directly intertwined and draw attention not only to the event itself, but also to the conditions under which it is captured on film. On the upper floor, Further Reductions brings together new works in which Könnemann continues her sculptural series Lithic Reductions – fine porcelain objects that are formally reminiscent of prehistoric tools. In an examination of the subculture of so-called ‘knapping’ – a community of hobbyists who recreate Neolithic artefacts – the works combine archaeologically derived and accidentally created forms with speculative narratives about scarcity, imagination and Stone Age thinking.
Whether in fleeting movements on the fringes of public events or in archaically charged objects that oscillate between past and present: Könnemann shows how perception and meaning are always tied to processes – to forms of friction, recoding and condensation that usually lie beyond the central visual axes.
Nina Könnemann (born 1971 in Bonn) lives and works in Berlin. Her most recent solo exhibitions include presentations at Gandt, New York (2023), Lars Friedrich, Berlin (2022), High Art, Paris (2021), Montos Tattoo, Vilnius (2021) and House of Gaga, Los Angeles (2018). Her works have also been shown in numerous group exhibitions, most recently at Fluentum, Berlin (2024), FRAC Lorraine, Metz (2024), Sammlung Goetz, Munich (2022), Kunsthaus Glarus (2021), Francesca Pia, Zurich (2020), Belvedere 21, Vienna (2019), and mumok, Vienna (2019, 2022). Her performative video works have been shown at Treize, Paris (2023), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017), Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2016), and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2017), among others.
Curated by
Beatrice Hilke
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Bierke Books.
WHERE?
Haus am Waldsee
Argentinische Allee 30
14163 Berlin
WHEN?
Opening: Saturday, 24th May 2025, 6 pm.
Exhibition dates:: Saturday, 24th May – Sunday, 14th September 2025
