Laura Langer presents two new groups of works in her exhibition Headlines: a series of paintings with spirals on a silver background and an installation incorporating the skylight in the exhibition space. The paintings show different sections of the same motif. The series presents the viewer with an initially simple idea: we only need to see a small section of the spiral in order to reflect on it further in our mind. The artist associates the spiral motif with incessant thoughts you can’t get rid of. The spiral is a form that endlessly rotates around itself. This is contrasted with the grid of the installation on the skylight. Straight lines meet, cross one another, and create a system of order. Collaged onto this are excerpted headlines from London tabloid newspapers. References to current events spread out over the heads of viewers in the exhibition space. The installation makes visible the linguistic configuration of the headlines and also alludes to their event-like nature. Headlines typically convey basic, factual information, but Laura Langer omits location and subject matter. What remains is the mode of language. Words are cut out and reconfigured along lines, forming a web of linguistically amplified and attention-grabbing accumulations of loosely associated meanings. In these two groups of works, Langer presents different systems of ordering lines and explores how they influence our viewing of them. Resulting from this interaction with language are complex approaches to the question of how we subjectively process information and complete it in our mind. 

Laura Langer is a painter with a conceptual approach. She works in series, establishing links between the work and the space of presentation. She incorporates the viewer’s perception into her reflections and artistic processes, weaving together personal as well as socio-political themes within a specific series of works. In addition to painting, she works with photography, and language. 

Accompanying the exhibition is an interview with Laura Langer by Melanie Ohnemus.