We are delighted to host the exhibition Displacement Channel by Hanna Hildebrand from April 8 to May 15, 2011 – the show provides an ideal insight into her most recent art. The exhibition will be held as part of the basis studio program in which Hanna Hildebrand participated as a scholarship holder in 2009/2010.

In her installations, situational projects and performance-based interventions Hanna Hildebrand examines everyday forms of social relationship patterns along with the dynamics of group-specific and individual behavior as can be witnessed both in an art context just as it can in the public sphere. Often she has various groups of participants engaged in her performances, interpreting the physical presence of the extras, actors or visitors as artistic material. The multi-faceted and unpredictable nature of human behavior, which Hildebrand seeks to expose in her performances by means of minimalist strategies, is an essential component in her work. In this sense the participants’ contribution becomes a constituent element of Hildebrand’s artistic practice. In a bid to challenge visitors to the exhibition and their conventional manner of receiving art, she employs a range of different media and utensils to create moments of social interaction in her performances. In these, viewers often cannot clearly identify what constitutes the artistic act. Evoking an immediate response to the communication contexts arising in these particular moments and playing with the manifold forms and intensities of attention that Hildebrand explores in her interventions are characteristics of her approach.

For her exhibition at basis, Hanna Hildebrand conceived the opening evening as a participatory event; this involved the participants performing actions according to Hildebrand’s instructions in variously designed settings, and interacting with the visitors to the exhibition as well as special objects - as a choreography which was sometimes more, sometimes less evident for the visitors. Hildebrand created a temporary space for visitors to experience, with the aim of questioning the viewer’s role in his encounter with art and breaking up conventional manners of behavior. Simultaneously, in this context the question automatically arises as to the status or function of the objects employed. Are they ‘normal utensils’ or works of art?

The exhibition is now showing the film material, which was recorded during the opening evening and documented as an action. For the duration of the exhibition the film material is subject to a continuous processing, in which the artist, via this exploration of the format of the documentary film, arrives at an original cinematic work.

Hanna Hildebrand (born 1978 in Como) studied at Frankfurt’s Städelschule and completed her degree in 2009 as a student in Tobias Rehberger’s master class. To date, she has participated in numerous international exhibition projects, including 2010 One day they will be gone, exhibition by DAAD (German Academic Exchange) laureates at Städelschule 2006-2010, Frankfurt and Swiss Art Award, Messe Platz/ Fair Basel; 2009 graduate exhibition at Städelschule and 2008 Frankfurt Good Wood at Hold&Freight. In 2009 she received the Absolventenpreis (graduate award) donated by Städelschule Portikus e.V.

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