Je suis belle - Staged photography from the OSRAM COLLECTION

Including works by Chantal Michel, Julia Kissina and Katja Eckert

The new exhibition compiled from the company's artwork collection is centered around a new acquisition: "Girlfriends" by the Swiss artist, Chantal Michel. This pair of images complements the focus of the collection on the dialog between painting and photography. Michel's key interest concerns the search for one's own identity.

The artist, born in 1968, places herself in different roles in her group and individual portraits. At the end of the 1990s she began to use her own body as source material for her art, primarily through the medium of performance and subsequently in photography, in order to capture the atmosphere of the moment. Here she places herself in particular situations on the borderline to being a decorative accessory. The central theme in the two new acquisitions is the phenomenon of the "doppelganger", the lookalike who poses the question of individuality and identity.

Michel's two works of art are juxtaposed in the exhibitions in particular with the work of Julia Kissina, whose art in the collection is supplemented by loans from the artist. She also experiments in her works with the elements of alienation and the concept of cloning, drawing on humor at the same time.

The presence and absence of humans in her images are key aspects in Katja Eckert's diptych, "Echo", that serve to expand the dialog on human identity. That the images appear to convey the realism of photography has a reason: the works are practically digital drawings designed purely from the power of imagination and printed on photographic paper.

OSRAM has been presenting contemporary art since 1966. The company's commitment to promoting new art has been further boosted by the creation of their own art collection, which was initiated in 2001.

The exhibition runs from June 1 to November 5, 2011. During this time the SEVEN SCREENS on the Munich ring road will be displaying Saskia Olde Wolber's "Cellule".

Gallery opening hours: Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. till 6 p.m.