SAN ANTONIO, TX.- Blue Star Contemporary, San Antonio’s first and longest- running contemporary art nonprofit, unveiled three new summer exhibitions. Andreas Till: De Ami, focuses on the influence of the presence of American troops in artist, Andreas Till’s, hometown Heidelberg, Germany. The Other Side, is a small selection of films by Faezeh Nikoozad, Aki Pao-Chen Chiu, Breech Asher Harani, and Fumiko Kikuchi . Fake Plastic Forest features photographic and lens-based work by France Dubois, Annette Isham, Işık Kaya, and Leigh Merrill. The exhibitions will be on view through October 9, 2022.

ANDREAS TILL: DE AMI focuses on the influence of the presence of American troops in artist, Andreas Till’s, hometown Heidelberg, Germany and the relationship between Germans and Americans between 1945 and 2013 born out of this presence. His research is based on found material from various archives such as the Rose Library in Atlanta and the Archive of the City of Heidelberg as well as various personal collections. The artist’s personal collection chronicles a lifelong friendship between former editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, Ralph Emerson McGill and Till’s grandmother Else Volkwein.

Andreas Till (b. 1984) holds a M.A. in Photographic Studies from the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Germany. In 2010, he received a Fulbright scholarship to the Fine Art Photography and Integrated Media program (M.F.A.) of Ohio University in Athens, OH. He currently lives in Hamburg, Germany where he works as a photo editor.

THE OTHER SIDE brings together a small selection of films referencing ideas of transitions and events that foundationally change someone, i.e., “to be on the other side of something.” Works also allude to ideas of mortality and the spiritual concept of metaphysical selves entering a new plane.

This group of films was selected from Darmstädter Sezession’s 2021 prize shortlist for its collaborative Projection/Projektion grants and screenings programs with BSC. This will be the first screening of these films in San Antonio.

Featured Films:

• Asb by Faezeh Nikoozad
• Translating Erasure by Aki Pao-Chen Chiu
• BINTANA (Window) by Breech Asher Harani
• I know where you are right now by Fumiko Kikuchi

FAKE PLASTIC FOREST features the work of France Dubois, Annette Isham, Işık Kaya, and Leigh Merrill; contemporary photographers and lens-based artists dealing with themes of artifice, truth and fiction, and the theatricality of our interactions with nature. Collectively these themes relate to ideas of preservation, the transcendent practice of experiencing nature, and seeking representations of nature to process and release intense events and emotions such as fear and grief. Our various relationships with nature are revealing of personal and collective selves. The urgency to reflect on these relationships is ever-present as we globally contend with humanity’s impact on our environment and consider transnational identities. The selected artists can be considered in the context of numerous other female photographers throughout the history of the medium who have used their environments, both natural and human made, as the site/studio where the work is made, and a part of the subject. These artists used the context of vast landscape, forests, and trees as well as fabricated, nature-inspired spaces, as sites and pivotal subjects for addressing themes such as psychology and mysticism.