Petra Spielhagen is a Berlin-based artist who focuses on the interwoven moments between everyday life and the staged. Her output spans three main areas:

Installations Photography Digital

Petra Spielhagen is occupied with images of everyday situations in public space, in the landscape and on travels. In particular, she is interested in how sets and scenes for a possible event are emerging in our increasingly staged reality.

She uses photographs and typical resources of the theater to isolate an element from a spatial or temporal context and insert it as a photograph or painted backdrop in another place.

For presentation, she adopts formats and displays of everyday contexts such as advertising. In participatory actions, passers-by are involved. They get a photo of themselves in front of a backdrop or exchange a story for a photo of a place.

Petra lives and works in Berlin, studied free art and stage design at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee. Among other things, she exhibited at the Festival of Regions, Linz, Austria, in the NGBK, Berlin; at the DA, Kunsthaus Kloster Gravenhorst, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in Marseille, France, at the Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin.

She has received the following prizes and grants, among others: research grant, global grant from the Berlin Senate for Rotterdam, Otte 1 künstlerhaus Eckernförde, Schöppingen Artists’ Village Foundation, Goldrausch female artists’ project, Berlin; Project grant, DA, Kunsthaus Kloster Gravenhorst; Artist Residency, Cannes, France; Hotel Neustadt, Festival, Halle-Neustadt, project funding from the Senate for Science, Research and Culture, Berlin; First prize in the art competition of the Max Planck Society/realization of the Wandering Light Field for the Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin.

Contact

p.spielhagen@web.de

Credits
Website design: Null Zero
Development: Virgile Janssen

©
The copyright lies with Petra Spielhagen/VG Bildkunst Bonn and the individual authors and photographers. Despite careful content control, the site owner assumes no liability for the content of external links. The operators of the linked pages are solely responsible for their content.

Impressum

Index

Selected works Archive

Media

Installations Photography Texts

Theme

art in architecture Illumination landscape mise en scène participatory public space

Years

1999 - 2009 2010 – 2019 2020 onwards

Zwischen Hochhausgipfeln — Tour Ha-Neu

(Between the high-rise peaks — Tour Ha-Neu)
Halle Neustadt, 2003.
Staged tour of Halle-Neustadt with city guide.
90min, sights, props.

Installations mise en scène participatory public space 1999 - 2009

Zwischen Hochhausgipfeln — Tour Ha-Neu was realised for the Festival Hotel Neustadt, September 2003. The actor, Peter Härtwig (Thalia Theater Halle) led tour groups through Halle-Neustadt as if he were a pensioner who knew the place like the back of his hand. A photographer appeared at special places.

THA_01.1

PS_Plan

THA_02.1

Katze

Pittyplatsch, Neustadt’s first kindergarden once stood on this spot. Leonov was its patron. At the opening ceremony, while his wife cut the ribbon, he drew this little cat for the children. He was the first free-floating cosmonaut in space and a painter.

THA_03.1

This pond, ladies and gentleman, is very special because when Karl May was on a visit to Halle, he hap- pened upon it and was inspired to write his famous story “The Silver Pond Treasure”.

THA_05.1

THA_04.1

Relics of the legendary sheikhs club.

THA_06.1

This work of art was created in 1986 by Hans-Joachim Triebsch and Heinz Möhrdel for what was then the Thälmann school. The text with its humanist appeal, is intended to be timeless. The emphasis of the picture is not so much on the politician Thälmann as on the theme. He blends into the red colour of the background and so fades into it. The technique they used is interesting: A silkscreen prototype was made from a photomontage and this was then fired in enamel. Because of the scar- city of materials, gas stove lids were used. These are carried by a wooden structure underneath.