Wolkenstudie

Megan Francis Sullivan (born 1975 in Stamford, Connecticut; lives and works in Berlin) deals with the question of what art is and how its forms convey meaning, exploring both the auratic constitution of individual works and the relationships they enter into on different levels: temporal and spatial, literal and referential, economic and ecological. These questions of relation are underlined by shifts in production strategies and through the combinations of works, creating tensions between original and copy, situation and reference, concrete object and abstract thought. Objects and relationships entwine to create an exhibition scenario that does not serve to exemplify predetermined concepts and genre-based classifica­tions, but rather opens up the space between such definitions. The context itself becomes the material and in this movement reveals itself in both its stabilizing and fragile effect. For "Wolkenstudie" (Cloud Study), Sullivan has developed works that incorporate local content, such as historical drawings from the textile industry or landscape paintings by Johann Gottfried Steffan from the collection of the Glarner Kunstverein. The show also includes new studies of Hans Haacke’s "Condensation Wall" (1963–64/2014) and Adolph Menzel’s "Wolkenstudie" (1851), as well a model of the facade of the 1990s New York gallery American Fine Arts, Co. By processing various technological and cultural moments as an operational study in itself, an intermediate zone arises in which the meeting of these works offers shifting ontological impressions of each. Megan Francis Sullivan studied at the Cooper Union, New York, Städelschule, Frankfurt and Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. Selected solo exhibitions: New Toni, Berlin, 2023; Neuer Essener Kunstverein, Essen, 2019; Mathew Gallery, NYC, 2017; Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, 2016; Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp, 2015; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, 2014. Her most recent publication is "Oral History of Exhibitions 2013–2019" (New Toni Press, 2024). She is editor of S*I*G, “a periodical for singular essays”. Since 2019 she has been professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Mainz.