| On April 18th, 2009 I would turn 34; I live and work in Milan, Italy. In my pictures I deal with eroticism. I often perform my fantasies or situations from my imagination. The characters you find in my photos are imaginary. I do not make portraits; the models become actors of a personal fantasy. Having said that, I don’t mean there’s no change. Sometimes the image I create, even if it has been projected before, modifies spontaneously when I shoot, absorbing external stimuli from the atmosphere at the location of the shoot, or the feeling among the people at the set. My pictures are erotic, and I don’t mind at all if you can find them more on erotic Web sites than on artistic ones. I don’t want anything hidden behind eroticism. This “other” belongs to me, to my life, to my cultural background. I observe a lot of things: photography, cinema, art, but, more than anything, life. |  |
The Carnegie International
Since the 1960s, Hanne Darboven has focused her art-making on daily “writings” that chronicle existence and evoke the passage of time. The 2,782 typed and hand-written daily writings or drawings that make up Leben, leben/Life, living represent Darboven’s systematic approach to counting the years 1900 to 1999. These drawings make visible two orders of time: the actual time taken to create them and the historical time that they summarize. Darboven asserts the presentness of time by marking its passage in a literal form that takes up volumetric space when the writings are installed in a large gallery. The work includes two dollhouses that are part of Darboven’s extensive collection of popular artifacts. The houses, photos of which are included in the installation, mark time as one represents a 19th-century German home and the other a house from the 1950s.
Hanne Darboven has exhibited extensively for over 30 years, participating in many important international exhibitions, including documenta 5 (1972), documenta 6 (1977), documenta 7 (1982), Kassel, and 40th Venice Biennale (1982). Her work has been presented in major survey shows such as 1965-1975: Reconsidering the Object of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1995); and Die Epoche der Moderne: Kunst im 20; and Jahrhundert, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (1997). Darboven’s first solo exhibition with Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, was in 1973. Recent solo exhibitions include Hanne Darboven: Evolution Leibniz, 1986, Sprengel Museum Hannover (1996); Hanne Darboven: Kulturgeschichte, 1880-1983, Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1996-97); Hanne Darboven: Kinder dieser Welt, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (1997); Stone of wisdom/ Stein der weisen 1996, Sperone Westwater, New York (1998); and Hanne Darboven: Menschen und Landschaften, Hallen für Neue Kunst, Schaffhausen (1999).
