303 Gallery is pleased to announce its first exhibition of British artists Jane and Louise Wilson. This installation, entitled "Stasi City", consists of two double wall projections and a series of photographic stills. Stasi City is the unofficial name for a site in East Berlin where the GDR's intelligence service, the Staatsicherheit, once operated. The Wilsons evoke the former division between East and West Berlin to point out how even two entities originally very similar, whether they be two halves of a city or two sisters, inevitably perceive differently, highlighting the sense of relativity, alienation, and mystery that is a part of human experience.
The two double wall projections, moving in and out of sync with each other, pan office interiors, hallways and interrogation rooms that were part of the Stasi headquarters during the Cold War. The “stereoscopic” interaction of the two projections can be seen as a reflection of the collaboration between, and respective independent identities of, Jane and Louise Wilson.
These video and photographic recordings of the relics of the Cold War place the viewer not only within the experiential space of the abandoned historical site but also, with the introduction of a levitating figure, within an abstracted realm. The physical and psychological dimensions to the installation attract and repel us as we negotiate our relationship to the original site, and to the new poetic and curious representation of it that Jane and Louise Wilson have created.
Jane and Louise Wilson recently had two-person shows at the Centre d’art contemporain in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Kunstverein Hannover in Germany, for which a catalogue is available.