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west eye

 

Jesús Gironés

In Bettina Geisselmann’s work, photography is to some extent used as a game, exploiting and exploring its possibilities. Since everything is a game of appearances, let’s play.

Crystal or ice? Warm or cold?

Sensual, luminous, opaque, translucent…? A game of light, after all.

Geisselmann constantly experiments, her ideas appear stunningly and she embarks on the often difficult task of materialization. Bettina, who studied economics, shows the strength of other German / Spanish artists who I have known, like Ute Gadner.

Mediterranean and sensual, a pre-Bismark vitality. A mind with a very rational and at the same time very intuitive depth. Ibiza or Cuba is essential in her training and activity. There is also a drive to discover, to create, to imagine, to control. Her mind moves ahead of her dreams, and her force and her weakness are in that tension.

I remember one of her installations which consisted of a series of ice pieces, each one a letter building the phrase “I love you”.

It barely lasted a few minutes before breaking off, like the tiniest icebergs collapsing, like glints of an avalanche. While that “I love you” was breaking, somebody cried: “Incredible, the broken love, like life itself”.