Katrina Daschner "Fear Eat Soul Up"
November 4 - December 20, 2007

Press release

Naima and Naima (detail Harbor of Love), 2006, video, 1 min


KATRINA DASCHNER
"Fear Eat Soul Up"

November 4 – December 20, 2007
Opening reception Sun, Nov 4 from 6 – 9 pm.         

Thrust Projects is proud to present the debut New York exhibition Katrina Daschner "Fear Eat Soul Up", a complete installative collage of sewn objects, drawings, private found footage, personal photographs and video material that interweave images of women in different roles with specific queer desires. Katrina Daschner , a performance artist using video and photography, acts out her projects within the queer context. Exploring the relationship between nature and gender in her own and projected experiences.

Daschner's exhibition draws from various countries and times. The title "Fear Eat Soul Up" ("Angst essen Seele auf") refers to the literal translation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1974 film and to the title of a work in the show, a photograph of the sentence tattooed into the artist's arm. Nature, nature I'm your bride, take me as I am (sewn collage, stirrups, horse whip, tie) draws inspiration from Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando , a narrative about a character who struggles to find a sense of identity in terms of sex and gender over the course of several centuries. What emerges from Daschner's findings about the "nature" of identity is that it is not an issue of one's biological sex, but of one's own particular social context with a desire for gender to seen as something fluid. Another "collage", Harbor of Love is a map with crochet sewn-forms on canvas; the forms do not correspond to a known state or continent but rather provoke an illusion of fictive territories. It represents a platform in a world beyond heteronormative structures of relationships. Daschner projects a video Naima and Naima , of a belly dancer and a female sailor intensely flirting, a loop made from a clip of a 1940's Egyptian film staring the famous actress Naima Akef playing the two roles.

Katrina Daschner was born in Hamburg, Germany and resides in Vienna, Austria.   She has exhibited her works in institutions and galleries internationally such as MUMOK, Vienna, Austria, The Museum of Modern Art, Nanjing, China, La Panaderia, México D.F., Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam, Secession, Vienna and Zacheta, Warsaw, Poland. She currently teaches performance art and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and is part of the Viennese performance band SV DAMENKRAFT. She will have a one-person exhibition at Fotogalerie Wien this winter.

For further information, please contact 212 431 4802 or jane@thrustprojects.com . Thrust Projects is located at 114 Bowery between Grand and Hester streets, on the 3rd floor. Gallery hrs: Wed - Sun from noon to 6pm. Directions: BD train to Grand/ F train to East Broadway/ 456 & NR to Canal/ JMZ to Bowery. Special thanks to Nieck de Bruijn , Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam, Li Tasser, and Rick Herron.