Bettina

The long exhibition title, borrowed from a print by Bettina Grossman (1927–2021), creates a certain ambivalence, as the terms connect with each other in different ways—both semantically and through rhythm and repetition.

Dating from 1969, the print is a response to the police brutality the artist witnessed in Paris after 1968. By adopting artistic strategies of this kind, Bettina succeeds in both activating and dissolving representational systems. Words become images. This artwork, in comparison to her photographed flags or street views, reveals a vocabulary rooted in characteristic registers of modernist ambitions. The word works, the subversion of figure and ground in her compositions, and the inclusion of applied arts could well be understood as a contribution to this established legacy of art and architectural history.

The exhibition is a joint production with the estate of Bettina Grossman, the artist Yto Barrada, and the New York gallery owners of Ulrik, Anya Komar, and Alex Fleming, and is enriched by their perspectives on Bettina's work. A selection of works from various series and creative periods provides insight into Bettina's artistic practice in the context of an architecture school. A mural, realized here for the first time, encompasses the entire exhibition space. It shows a series of photographs of the American flag blowing in the wind, or rather its distorted reflection in the glass facade of a Manhattan skyscraper. A group of marble sculptures entitled Inside-Outside House harks back to Bettina's new beginning after her studio was destroyed by fire. Scaled to an architectural model, the sculptures are arranged in a serial grid, with the material used—precious marble—contrary to the then-prevailing Minimalism that favored industrial materials. A selection of works from her Phenomenological New York series is juxtaposed with an early abstract tapestry. Although serial grids and abstraction, as used in art and architecture, play a role, they are undermined by distortions.

Opening: September 23, 2025, 6 p.m.