Bettina Pousttchi



Bettina Pousttchi (born 1971) is a German artist of German-Iranian descent. She currently lives in Berlin. She has worked in photography, sculpture, video and site-specific installation.

Life
In 1990-1992, she studied fine art at the Université de Paris. Then in 1992-1997, studied philosophy, art history and film theory at the Universities of Cologne and Bochum. She studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Rosemarie Trockel and Gerhard Merz in 1995-1999. From 1999-2000, she followed the Independent Studio Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She had work in the Venice Biennale in 2003 and again in 2009. In 2014, she received the Kunstpreis der Stadt Wolfsburg of the Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, in Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony.

World Time Clock
In 2016–2017 her photographic series World Time Clock was shown at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in a 360-degree presentation; it consisted of twenty-four photographs of clock-faces, one from each of the major time zones of the world, and all taken at five minutes to two. World Time Clock is the artist's most comprehensive photographic series to date for which she travelled eight years in several stages in the world's various time zones. In each of the places she photographed public clocks always at the same time. Thus arose a work spanning the entire globe which examines the political and social organization of time and space. After its initial full circle presentation at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC the series was also presented in Berlin at the Berlinische Galerie, Museum of Modern Art Berlin in 2019/2020.

Façades in public space
Since 2009, Bettina Pousttchi has been realizing photographic interventions on public buildings, which are related to the urban and historic context of each particular place. Her monumental photo installation Echo on Schlossplatz in Berlin covered the entire exterior façade of the Temporäre Kunsthalle for half a year. Extending nearly 2,000 square meters, the installation consisted of 970 different paper posters, and formed a continuous motif that recalled the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic), the building which had just been demolished on that very site.

In 2014, the artist transformed the Nasher Sculpture Center Dallas into a Drive-Thru Museum, referencing the site's history and the architecture of the Renzo Piano building. Her up to now largest photo installation to this point is The City (2014), which covered three sides of the Wolfsburg castle with a 2,150 square meter photographic print. The photomontage shows ten skyscrapers that have been the world's highest buildings, grouping them together into an imaginary single transnational skyline.

On the occasion of her survey exhibition In Recent Years 2019-2020 at Berlinische Galerie, she transformed the entire glass facade of the museum with the photo installation Berlin Window.

Konzerthaus Berlin commissioned the artist 2021 on the occasion of their bicentennial with the work, Amplifier transforming the historical building by Karl Friedrich Schinkel on Gendarmenmarkt. For the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn the artist has realized in 2022 the rooftop intsllation The Curve, a 37 meter long participatory sculpture that invites the viewer to use the object.

Sculptures
Since 2005 Pousttchi’s sculptural works often use street furniture like street bollards, crowd barriers or bike racks as a starting point. She transforms these everyday objects into new sculptural compositions of various colors and surfaces. Her most recent sculptures Vertical Highways are transformations of crash barriers. The vertical alignment and modular use of a prefabricated element change the viewer’s spatial perception and give the work an architectural reference. Three of these sculptures were presented at the Tuileries Garden in Paris in October 2021, as part of the outdoor exhibition Hors les Murs in front of the Musée du Louvre. Her largest sculpture of this series is 6 meter tall (20 feet) public sculpture that is located in front of the Berlin Central Station at Washingtonplatz, one of the most frequented places in Berlin, vis-a-vis the Reichstag.

Collections
Examples of her work are held in various public collections, among them the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Arts Club of Chicago, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Texas, the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin, the Albertina in Vienna, the Von-der-Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, as well as in the collection of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Collaborations
The artist has been realizing artistic collaborations with Rosemarie Trockel and Daniel Buren, she has been part of a film by Lawrence Weiner and she was a member of the Brutally Early Club founded by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Grants and awards
2016: Villa Aurora, Los Angeles

2014: Wolfsburg Art Prize, Junge Stadt sieht Junge Kunst

2008: TrAIN, Research Center for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation, University of the Arts, London

2007: BBAX - Berlin Buenos Aires Art Exchange

2005: Provinzial Förderprojekt

2000: Kunststiftung NRW

Exhibitions

 * Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2001)
 * Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2003)
 * Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal (2007)
 * Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin (2009/2010)
 * Kunsthalle Basel (2011)
 * Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2012)
 * Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg (2014)
 * Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas (2014)
 * The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. (2016)
 * Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C (2016/2017)
 * The Arts Club of Chicago (2017)
 * Kunsthalle Mainz (with Daniel Buren) (2017)
 * Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2018)
 * Neues Museum Nürnberg (2018)
 * Kunsthalle Tübingen (2019/2020)
 * KINDL – Centre of Contemporary Art Berlin (2019/2020)
 * Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2019/2020)
 * Konzerthaus Berlin (2021)
 * Arp Museum, Remagen (2021/2022)
 * Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2022)
 * Aurora Museum, Shanghai (2023)
 * Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai (2023)
 * Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich (2024)