Barbara Kasten: Site Lines

About

Site Lines, Kasten's first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery, comprises a new, site-specific commission that responds to the distinctive architectural features of the De La Warr Pavilion's Grade I listed modernist building. Furthering her interest in the mechanisms and structures of how images are created, she has reconceived the gallery's windows as a proscenium: a threshold between inside and outside space. Leant up against the glass are a series of coloured, acrylic beams, the forms of which echo the internal and external columns that support the Pavilion's rectilinear geometries. Installed throughout the gallery – 'backstage' behind the proscenium – is a series of stage flats constructed out of metal and mirror. Kasten imagines these as 'movie screens' that provide a cinematic experience for visitors across the site through reflection and warping. Combined with stage lighting, these screens create a choreography of colour, light, and shadow throughout the space as its atmosphere changes with the weather outside.

Presented in the context of this new commission is a work from Kasten's seminal Architectural Sites series (1986-89). Made on location with a single exposure and no digital intervention, this body of work restages the architectural sites of several museums and institutions through bold colours and kaleidoscopic perspectives. As reconfigurations of architectural forms shifting from two to three dimensions, this photographic series speaks to Kasten's transformation of the gallery this summer, as she invites visitors to enter her theatrical construction and move through modernist form in real time.