Photography Exhibition Galerie XII : Susanne Wellm – De l’autre côté

From April 19 to July 13, 2024, Galerie XII presents an exhibition by Danish artist Susanne Wellm, curated by Chantal and Gabriel Bauret.

Entitled “On the Other Side”, this exhibition explores urban and everyday narratives. Drawing on a vast collection of images found in photo albums, historical books, film footage and her own snapshots, Susanne Wellm establishes links between the personal dramas of everyday life and the history of collective trauma in modern Europe. Images are cut up and dissolved, only to be symbolically rewoven and reconnected. Through collage and montage, Susanne Wellm assembles glimpses of a sometimes banal reality into poetic, multi-layered pictorial spaces, where fiction and fact, stagnation and movement, inside and outside, merge into highly significant moments, cinematically tracing an action, while remaining open to interpretation.

Artist Susanne Wellm uses photography as her principal means of expression. Since the 1990s, she has explored a wide range of photographic techniques, both analog and digital, often used artistically in hybrid form. Exploring the physical qualities of the two-dimensional image, she has recently developed a process combining photography and weaving, adding complex, material layers of color, contrast and depth to her works.

Certain themes recur in Susanne Wellm’s practice, her interest in time, memory and the construction of narrative. Drawing on a vast archive of images found in old family albums, historical film stills and original captures, Susanne Wellm establishes links between everyday life and collective history, adding a poetic dimension that leaves a wider field of interpretation open.

As such, Susanne Wellm’s evocative, unfinished works prompt reflection on our eternal quest for meaning, in the entangled relationships between ourselves and the world, past and present.

Susanne Wellm graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Architecture, Design and Conservation in 1995. Since then, she has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. Her work is represented in several important collections, including the Danish Arts Foundation, the New Carlsberg Foundation, the Royal Library’s National Photo Collection, Brandts Art Museum, Vejle Art Museum, Portland Art Museum – Portland, Oregon, Museum of Fine Arts – Houston. Texas, Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts – Japan.