Kathrin Sonntag

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Kathrin Sonntag

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Nothing is as it appears in Kathrin Sonntag’s work. Her photographs, objets trouvés and films mostly presented in the context of installations address the conditions of perception, observation, and cognition. Kathrin Sonntag plays with the paradoxical cultural history of photography, a medium that can depict “objective reality”, on the one hand, and manipulate the reality of the image, on the other. With a wink, the question “Can I believe my eyes?” is always present. The triptych “Conversation Piece” plays with the idiosyncratic analogy of the shapes of two things that actually do not belong together. During the process of categorization, which is characteristic of perception, new contexts of meaning arise in a “dance-like” way and, of course, the question of whether the motif might have been manipulated worms its way into this humorous moment of irritation. This magical play of visual rhymes and the ensuing new and unexpected meaning is continued in Kathrin Sonntag’s “Atlas”-series. Found and manipulated image material is set in a playful relation to her own motifs. The object-like feel of the photos created by folding alludes to the shape of a book, a picture atlas, in which the gaze of the viewer can “browse” endlessly.

Kathrin Sonntag, born 1981, belongs to the emerging international positions of young photography, treating the medium in a new way. Works by Kathrin Sonntag have been on view in internationally acclaimed exhibitions including “Photo Poetics: An Anthology“, Guggenheim Museum New York, and “RAY” Fotografie Projekte, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt am Main. She has shown photo projects at the Aspen Art Museum, Kunstverein Hamburg, the Swiss Institute New York, and Schaustelle der Pinakothek der Moderne Munich. Her works are included in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, among others. In 2021 a comprehensive solo exhibition "ICHDUERSIEESWIRIHRSIE" took place at the Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Switzerland and last year she received the "Stiftungspreis Fotokunst 2023". Currently Sonntag's work is on view at "Size Matters – Grösse in der Fotografie", Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, DE and "Gabriele Münter / Kathrin Sonntag", Museum Ravensburg, DE.