Jeanne Faust

Film and photography are the media of Jeanne Faust, born in 1968 and today based in Hamburg. In her cinematic language she makes use of those moments of dramaturgical emptiness, those clichés of the alien and the familiar, that made her great model Rainer Werner Fassbinder famous in the 1960s and 1970s. Her photographic procedure, by contrast, stages – at times in shot and reverse-shot variants – cinematic situations of the kind familiar from classic film stills and such as Jeff Wall, for instance, has shifted towards the documentary in his highly staged photography. The countervailing element in Jeanne Faust’s procedure yields captivating results, by means of which she is able to hold her work in a disconcerting state of suspension; viewers constantly expect and anticipate a continuation, yet for this they are thrown back on their own imagination. Besides a first larger solo presentation at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz (2002), Jeanne Faust’s works have attracted attention above all in the exhibitions „New Heimat“ (Frankfurter Kunstverein 2001) and „Manifesta 4“ (Frankfurt 2002). The catalogue accompanying the exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (and at the Kunstverein Heilbronn) is the first monographic publication and contains, alongside numerous large-format photographs, a complete filmography with explanatory short texts by the artist.

Exhibitions:
Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 26/1 – 30/3/2003
Kunstverein Heilbronn, 5/4 – 18/5/2003