Bettina Scholz: Ost / West

SciFi?

Bettina Scholz paints pictures that are remi­niscent of alchemical pours and drips of paint. Many viewers tend to see apocalyptic worlds in them, according to Max Dax, who invited the artist to the Deichtorhallen for »HYPER!« in the summer of 2019. This notion is hardly surprising, given that her vibrantly luminous pictures, painted on and behind glass, are the result of an explo­ration of sacred church art, Gothic book illumination, and the visual and musical world of contem­- ­porary fantasy and science fiction formats. Though there are also quite specific references to films such as Ridley Scott's »Blade Runner«, the »Dune« films based on the epic novels by American writer Frank Herbert, Andrei Tarkovsky's films »Solaris« and »Stalker« with their film music by Edvard ­Artemiev, as well as to the sound of the techno label Underground Resistance. Bettina Scholz works on acrylic glass, as well as on wood or ­canvas, and her drawings, objects, and installa­tions reflect not least the visual influences of her childhood in the former GDR. Her love of fairy tale books emerged there, of the Jugendstil style of the golden age of illustration, and her appreciation of the richly decorated Eastern European picture book editions or the colorfully printed edition of Michael Ende's classic »Momo«, complete with drawings, that was smuggled into the country. For Bettina Scholz, products of the imagination have an enormous influence on what we call reality: »I don't see the fantastic, the invented in an artistic context as having anything to do with escapism or trivialization; on the contrary, it can inspire independent thinking and even develop rebellious ­potential.« During the period of stagnation during the 2020s, she furthermore began working on a series of sketchbooks containing around 500 drawings and collages; excerpts from these are presented here for the first time. The monograph presents pictures and exhibition views from the last ten years and is