STERN CONTEMPORARY Online Booklet

neue Welt“ gezeigten Arbeiten.
Seit 2011 lebt und arbeitet Dikla Stern
als freischaffende Künstlerin in Berlin.
Ihre Werke konnten schon in vielen nationalen
und internationalen Ausstellungen
bewundert werden: In Mannheim,
Leipzig, Karlsruhe, Berlin, Stockholm,
Brüssel, Florenz oder New York. Und
jetzt auch hier in Annweiler, im Hohenstaufensaal.
Dr. Stephan Truninger
INTRODUCTION
BRAVE NEW
WORLD
Brave New World: This title not only
succinctly encapsulates the paintings
and photographs shown here by Dikla
Stern, it also stands programmatically
for the Berlin artist’s entire body of
work. Whether characterizing people
with decisive strokes of the brush
or theatrically staging kitchen utensils
in photographs — her aim always lies
behind the beautiful facade, behind
the only seemingly harmless everyday
world.
At the same time, the images themselves
remain at the level of allusion. It is less
the motifs presented than the moods
and feelings conveyed that inspire viewers
to construct narratives and cause the
images to speak. This art challenges us
to engage in an individual dialogue.
Dikla Stern was born in Israel in 1972
and immigrated to Germany as a child.
It is no coincidence that her artistic
career began on the opera and the ater
stage. It is true that visual art soon became
the focus of her interest and she
turned away from the stage in order
to study graphic design and art at Tel
Aviv’s Avni Institute of Art and Design.
Nonetheless, the experiences that she
had previously gathered with the representation
of narratives and with traditional
and modern forms of theater still
continue to contribute to her work today.
Her images provide viewers with a
stage for their own narratives — without
simultaneously dictating a specific
story to them.
In spite of this openness, every one
of the images presented here — be it
a group of men in suits, scalpels and
needles or something as mundane and
seemingly harmless as a kitchen spatula
— conveys a similar atmosphere: They
always resonate with a sense of men ace.
Fear is a theme that has already occupied
Dikla Stern for a long time, and
not just as an artist. Her intellectual occupation
with the world around her has