gatekeepers | natacha donzé

In her first solo show gatekeepers at max goelitz in Berlin, Natacha Donzé refers to political, social, and cultural structures that manifest themselves in the architecture of public spaces, as well as through information transfers. The title gatekeepers metaphorically describes the manifold activities that control or restrict access. This includes the influence of people as well as digital search engines (algorithmic exclusion), firewalls (geo-fenced information), social structures (institutions), hazardous material containment vessels or physical manifestations of virtual space (border walls).

In the paintings created for the exhibition, Donzé takes up architectural elements such as doors and portals, which act as social barriers through their delimiting characteristics and at the same time offer opportunities to enter other realities. Using air-brush techniques, Donzé builds multilayered and atmospheric paintings that become portals themselves. 

The artist allows various iconographies to merge in her paintings, referencing images from political contexts, historical encyclopedias, science fiction, religion, as well as mystical phenomena, superimposing them without hierarchy. By referring both to the physical barrier of gates and gatekeepers and to the increasing shift into virtual realms, Donzé allows time horizons to flow into each other and highlights the diversity of gatekeeping. Natacha Donzé approaches this subject through painting, creating an exhibition that unveils new dimensions, raises questions about temporality, corporeality, and power, and demonstrates how these issues play out in physical space, as well as through digital information transfer. 

The exhibition follows the artist's 2022 residency in Berlin, which was funded by the Swiss Department for Education, Youth and Culture.

→ further information about Natacha Donzé's oeuvre in the viewing room gatekeepers

→ Exhibition text (by Madeleine Freund)