Asta Gröting Berlin Fassaden

Combining jarring historical artifacts with the collective memory, German sculptor Asta Grting (b. 1961) presented her first solo exhibition of Berlin Fassaden at the KInDL, Centre for Contemporary Art (Berlin, 2017). Grting covered the gallery walls and floors with sculptural silicone impressions of Berlin facades containing traces of bullet holes from World War II. Dust, dirt, and even graffiti were layered over the silicon casts, giving the negative imprints an almost painted effect while embodying trauma and the suspension of time in a ghostly silicone skin. Grting chose to use her exhibition catalog to create a second interpretation of the work. She assembled a collage-like artist book filled with her raw black and white photographic details of the wall markings set next to documents of her making the wall casts and then connecting the two bodies of work with a running text that identified the corresponding location, dimensions, and date of each wall image. Grting brilliantly reconstructed these past wounds as architectural traces and translated them into meaningful abstract pictures. Texts by Andreas fiedler and Deborah Levy.