Marianne

With Marianne, Bettina Pousttchi follows the basic idea of the Riverside Sculpture Park in Remagen, which is to perceive the sculptures as something ordinary at first glance and to identify them as works of art only upon second glance.

This irritation is further intensified by the fact that everyday objects of the urban space - in this case street posts - which we all know for securing and marking traffic routes, now present themselves to the viewer as deformed groups of sculptures that seem to have fallen victim to external forces. And yet, the sculpture islands ultimately reveal themselves as lively arranged sculptural works that break free from their rigidity and now playfully occupy and animate their new home.

For the area in the immediate vicinity of the Unkelstein Bridge, Bettina Pousttchi has realized Marianne (2015), an installation of five sculptures, each measuring approximately 83 x 60 x 50 centimeters and consisting of two to three individual elements. As a kind of "playing area" the artist uses a concrete slab of about 6 x 15 meters, which was specially developed for the sculpture group, to let the "sculpture formations" rhythmically follow a choreography there.

The initial object of the sculptures are street posts made of stainless steel, which were mechanically deformed by the artist with the help of an industrial press to subsequently obtain a new anthracite-colored surface.

With her works, Bettina Pousttchi moves at the interface between sculpture, photography and architecture. She deals with the respective site-specific conditions and peculiarities. Architectural and urban environments play an essential role. With her interventions in the public space, in which street furniture such as bicycle racks, tree protection bars, road posts or guardrails all undergo a mechanical transformation process, she creates abstract sculptural settings that redefine the respective locations.