Boddenberg exhibition space is showing Carolin Israel's new series of works entitled ‘Kopfputz’ (headdress), which consists of variously cut metal sheets painted with acrylic paint. The word Kopfputz is an outdated term for headdress or head wreath. Positioned in the room at an individually determined distance from Carolin Israel's work, the upper prongs form a wreath that wraps itself around the viewer's head. Similar to a digital filter, the work cleans the viewer in this way - becoming a jewellery and body extension.
Photo and video recordings can be altered by apps and digital filters to suit the current trend. The image in the digital space is thus an interpretation of reality. The work becomes a tool for the visitor to have a visible effect on the appearance when creating the photo. In the encounter with the object, the digital self-portrayal is also considered, as it were. This potential - to use the environment as a physical filter - is the starting point for this series of sculptures. What are the parameters for a form to be attractive as a projection surface in social media? In the post-digital age, analogue and digital phenomena can no longer be separated. The image of painting and sculpture is already inherent in the physical object.

With her new series of works ‘Kopfputz’, Carolin Israel uses her digital drawings to create different pieces for the heads of visitors, thus referencing themes such as art viewing and self-staging. The individual pieces are artworks with an interactive element and are themselves hybrids of digital and analogue processes.

Carolin Israel *1990 in Chemnitz, lives in Düsseldorf. She studied Fine Arts at the HfBK Dresden and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Since 2019 she has been an artistic assistant and lecturer at the department of Painting at the University of Paderborn. She has been a member of the AURA Kunstraum in Düsseldorf since 2023. She has had exhibitions in Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Paris, Athens, Kyoto and Bogotá, among others.

Carolin Israel KOPFPUTZ is part of the exhibition series KRÄNZE curated by Sandy Becker and Marie Donike

funded by Kunststiftung NRW