Karin Fisslthaler, Claudia Larcher, Lilly Lulay, Nanne Meyer, Nikola Röthemeyer, Fiene Scharp, Claire Trotignon, Sinta Werner

Fragments of Belief explores the theme of collage and the use of the fragment with eight artistic positions. The artists have different approaches and themes, but these are still based on the general idea of deconstruction and reconfiguration. The artists work with elements of perception and illusion, faith and truth, doubling and fragmentation.

In her collages, Claudia Larcher takes architectural elements from magazines or advertising and uses them to define new layers in quick overlapping succession. One might say they fragment the fragment.

Karin Fisslthaler’s work is characterized by a distinctive view of the momentary and her unique take on image deconstruction. Her collages often make use of doubling as a vexing element, but also as a stylistic fragment. The work Strange Feeling plays with truth and perception in a way that is unmistakably her own.

Lilly Lulay is unique among the list of artists since no other artist’s body of work is so closely tied to the fragment as her own. For her, the fragment is not just an artistic idea, is it the expression of our society and of daily life.

Nanne Meyer’s Begraute from 1999–2004 are based on old postcards. By withholding visual information from the viewer, she simultaneously focuses attention on the fragment in the manner of a magnifying glass. Her visual sense for what’s truly special about daily life is unrivaled. Her work series titled Kartenschnitte is a game of concealing and revealing fragments.

Nikola Röthemeyer has worked with large-scale “spatial” drawings for a number of years. She describes her contribution to the exhibition as a “faunic cloud,” in which reflections, formerly on paper, now come alive in space.

Fiene Scharp’s work initially seems to be based strictly on the principle of repetition. Her cuttings, however, create something truly astonishing in the process, since in her work deconstruction goes hand-in-hand with making something new. With Greetings from Syria, she created a series of fleeting images from postcards. And with Collective Insanity, she presents a news image from Duma, which only gains more and more clarity over time.

For Claire Trotignon, the fragment is an initial starting point. Together with other fragments borrowed from engravings and postcards, she creates fantastic landscapes drifting off into undefined space in a manner recalling the Big Bang.

In her work Sinta Werner plays with ruptures. Some are intentional, while others simply emerge from the situation. Only few artists succeed in allowing the material, in the way Sinta Werner does, to find its own form and grant the fragment its natural place.