Studio Kalena
Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture
Berlin / St.Gallen

Portfolio

2014-2023

FRAGMENTS, 2021

IMMERSION II – Fragments

installation: 52 concrete tiles, yellow filler, wooden framework, 1 framed tile
Espace Nina Keel, St.Gallen, Switzerland, 2021

The tile picture is less an object in the room than a space- defining element: it takes a corner from it, gives it a slant, flows over into the floor, and redimensions the space.


ARCANUM, 2022

research work; brochure & tool „ARCANUM“
supported by the scholarship program INITIAL of the Academy of Arts Berlin, 2022

 A relief system whose parts can be playfully rearranged again and again. Possibilities of wall pictures emerge. The intersection of standardized modular construction and craft were explored.


LARGE & SMALL, 2021

artist residency and exhibition "LARGE & SMALL"
installation 1: 25 concrete tiles à 50 x 50 cm
installation 2: 7 oversized coats, Tyvek, in collaboration with Katherine Newton
Schlossmediale Werdenberg, Switzerland 2021

Comparing bodies and spaces, creating proportions, questioning what scale one gives oneself; the human body is a point of orientation for grasping a size. If we change the dimension of our body, we simultaneously change the relationship to everything that surrounds us.

COAT FOREST, 2022

COAT FOREST
Installation: 9 oversized coats made
of Tyvek, 2 projection screens made of Tyvek, in collaboration with Katherine Newton;
shadow play: Adelheid Kreisz
Musicians: Els Jordeans and Frank Kroll
supported by „Neustart Kultur“, Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, supported by „Neustart Kultur“, Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Stadthalle Korntal, Germany, 2022
Oversized, room-high paper coats are projection surfaces for dreamlike shadow images and space for experiments with light and shadow, light and dark sounds on the large stage of the city hall of Korntal; an immersive landscape of memories that makes the forest inside crackle, buzz and drip.

CITY REEF, 2019

architecture photography competition
exhibition of photo series „CITY REEF“
3rd place, Kulturerbe Lokremise
St. Gallen, Switzerland, 2019

The work CITY REEF shows in five pictures Lokremise St.Gallen as an enlivened stone structure that has already survived many years. Like an urban reef, it offers cultural living space for the city‘s inhabitants and visitors. It stands independently in the cityscape like a cliff that withstands currents of urban development and styles. Thus, the Lokremise becomes a point of orientation and a landmark in St.Gallen and Switzerland.


MAXIME EMBROIDERY, 2019

MAXIME EMBROIDERY
embroidery designs and photographs for the fashion label „VIII“ 
St.Gallen, Switzerland, 2019
The embroidery in the drapery; the line of the human figure transforms into a chaos. Only fragments can be read. The photographs for the collection again play with the motifs of the embroidery designs. The subject matter is emphasized through overlays, transparent areas, and the blending of embroidery and human.

DRESS, 2017

artist residency and exhibition of DRESS at Eisenwerk Frauenfeld, Switzerland 2017
During a month-long studio period at Eisenwerk Frauenfeld, Katia Rudnicki, together with Katherine Newton, Marion Täschler and Elea Rohner, explored the theme of „dress“ as the boundary between inside and outside. As a self-experiment, they uniformed themselves for a month to reinforce the perception of this boundary. Daily audio recordings documented how it feels inside to put one‘s own individual in the background and to exist as a group through the uniform. The voices of the audio recordings were distorted, thus anonymized, transcribed daily, and made publicly available as text in the publication. In this way, the four artists began to push this boundary and to dissolve it.

It became noticeable how even the smallest events become big issues and distinguish us. Scans of material, things left lying around, things found, or even a cut in the finger made this clear. Things that were not simply visible, but had to be illuminated, revealed astonishing structures. It is the space between human and dress. It is a zone that flickers, explodes, tenses and expands, is dusty, scratched up, dirty and steaming. It is a zone, that functions as a filter on which some things settle and harden. The exhibition „DRESS“ shows white coats that are oversized just like the scans.
The space between human and coat is enlarged and the own flickering filter zone becomes experienceable. Dust, dirt, explosions, expansions and hardenings are allowed to have space on these coats.

MASTER THESIS "DRESS", 2014

"DRESS", book and exhibition (video & photo)
a photographic investigation, in collaboration with Hannah Reuhl and Merlin Pohse
HGK FHNW Basel, Switzerland 2014
The question „What is a dress?“ lays the foundation of the book. We search for boundaries that surround us. We move in our environment, discover spaces and bodies, discover boundaries and freedoms that envelop humans. Playing with dimensions, the experiment started on the journey of our material and immaterial boundaries. During the investigation period, we defined the dress as a boundary that moves and changes with us. The dress takes shape, widens, constricts, twists.

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