Laura Bielau – ARBEIT, TEST, FOTOGRAMME, ICH

March 3 - April 7, 2024

Laura Bielau's work is created as an investigation into the conventions and expectations of the photographic image. In this context, the laboratory is central as a site of experimentation, control and production. While she initially focusses on the contexts of action in the light-tight space of the darkroom, her range of themes expands from the photo lab to scientific laboratories. In her works, conceived as series, she circles her subjects like a researcher over the course of several years. Successively and in ever new arrangements and contexts, she explores the construction, expressive and referential qualities of images. Her photography is a web of associations, metaphors and refusals as well as a reminder that there is yet another image underneath.

ARBEIT, TEST, FOTOGRAMME, ICH [WORK, TEST, PHOTOGRAMS, ME], relates to the work complexes on display. Bielau's approach could also be described as an aesthetic of reduction. Her photography – whether as a silver-gelatine print, sticker or working print – is a persistent abstraction of the motif. What does an image need to function as such? And what can be subtracted to condense it to its very essence?

Curated by Miriam Edmunds and Maxie Fischer.

The exhibitions are part of Residence NRW⁺, a fellowship programme for artists and curators. Residence NRW⁺ is a programme of the Kunsthalle Münster, an institution of the City of Münster.