BONN.- On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Bundeskunsthalle, Bettina Pousttchi is realising the 35-metre-long and four-metre-high sculptural work The Curve on the institution's flat roof. In doing so, she is responding to the architecture of the building by Gustav Peichl and his understanding of the roof as a ’fifth façade‘ and a ‘further exhibition space‘. Here, the new work can be visited and experienced free of charge parallel to the opening hours of the house.

Placed in the northwest corner, the sculpture nestles dynamically into the surrounding space in the form of an accessible steep curve. Markings, similar to those on a roadway, lead visitors to the object and connect it associatively with the urban context of the street and the urban space. With The Curve, the artist also refers to the legendary test track for cars that the Fiat company built on the roof of its factory in the Lingotto district of Turin, which opened in 1923. In its time, it stood for acceleration, movement and progress and thus also decisively for the utopia of modernity. Pousttchi's typological transformation of a car curve into a bicycle curve creates a sculpture that offers visitors an open stage for movement and encounter, and makes The Curve an artistic statement for a fluid society. In this way, the exclusively walk-in large sculpture is also a reflection on fluid change, participation and sustainability and blurs the boundaries between reality and artistic fiction.

The artistic focus of Bettina Pousttchi's work is always on the examination of structures of public space and, in addition to sculpture and photography, also includes site-specific interventions using the means of photography on the scale of architecture. For example, Echo, 2009, was a monumental photo installation on the entire façade of the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin that referred to the Palace of the Republic. The Curve is the artist's first sculpture on the scale of architecture that invites visitors to interact and participate.

Bettina Pousttchi (*1971 in Mainz, lives and works in Berlin) is one of Germany's leading contemporary artists and has also received great international recognition, especially in the USA. She works primarily with sculpture and photography. Her site-specific photo installations consistently challenge and expand the formal and conceptual possibilities of photography and explore the relationship between memory and history from a transnational perspective. Such an entanglement is the key to the artist's work. Pousttchi's sculptural works provide a deeper insight into her interest in the structures of public space. Starting from the structures that serve to order public space, these works address ‘crowd control‘, a topic that is currently more topical than ever.