Christiane Bergelt

In her exhibition, Christiane Bergelt explores a personal connection to Bernau: In 1972, her father was stationed in Bernau as a construction pioneer of the National People‘s Army (NVA) of the GDR.

From their time in service, many former NVA soldiers - including Christiane Bergelt‘s father - remember the famous „sausage cans“ from Weinböhla. The tins were the main dish of field food, because the military emergency rations...

In her exhibition, Christiane Bergelt explores a personal connection to Bernau: In 1972, her father was stationed in Bernau as a construction pioneer of the National People‘s Army (NVA) of the GDR.

From their time in service, many former NVA soldiers - including Christiane Bergelt‘s father - remember the famous „sausage cans“ from Weinböhla. The tins were the main dish of field food, because the military emergency rations included a meal of tinned meat, tinned bread and tinned biscuits. Canned meat was also available to the general population in a variety of flavours: Jagdwurst, Landleberwurst, Rotwurst, Kammfleischwurst, Schmalzfleisch, chicken in its own juice and even hare‘s back with bone.

Then as now, the contents of such preserves smell intense and spicy, and the pre-cooked, heavily processed meat
shimmers in the can, often surrounded by fat and jelly, juicy or pale in various shades of brown and red. Although the factory in Weinböhla has closed down in the meantime, industrially prepared meat and sausage products are still widespread and can be found on every supermarket shelf.

In general, eating meat is an important social issue at the moment. Christiane Bergelt examines it poetically, sensitively and humorously: she has cut fresh cold cuts from the refrigerated counter geometrically and placed them between two panes of glass like a microscopic specimen. The resulting objects can now be seen in the gallery, where they
sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly start to grow mouldy.

The artist‘s paintings also depict industrially produced meat and sausage products. An oversized mortadella with
pistachios looks like a portrait of cold cuts between the glass panes. In other, smaller pictures, the structures of the organic masses appear in abstract colours, so that it is no longer recognisable what the motif actually is. Here the realistic is lost and the blurred gains the upper hand over the canvas in the form of patterns, swathes and scribbles.

In so many ways, Christiane Bergelt‘s works at Galerie Bernau also bear witness to the fact that the attempt to remember correctly or to reliably reproduce a memory must end in diffusion, because no one is ever able to reproduce absolute truth.

Marie Egger


Christiane Bergelt (*1982 in Marienberg) lebt in Chorin und arbeitet in Angermünde.
Sie erhielt ihren M.A. in Freier Kunst und Malerei am Chelsea College of Art in London, gefördert durch ein Stipendium der Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. Davor studierte sie Freie Malerei an der Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Nürnberg.

Mit Stipendien des DAAD und des Landes Brandenburg nahm Bergelt Arbeitsaufenthalte in Island und auf Schloss Wiepersdorf wahr. 2017 wurde ihr der Nachwuchsförderpreis für Bildende Kunst und 2020 das Arbeitsstipendium des Landes Brandenburg verliehen.



Fotos: Alena Schmick