Karen Scheper’s works, which are mostly conceptualised as series, constantly take on new forms when placed in spatial installations. The staging allows wall drawings and drawn objects hanging from the ceiling to find their own way into the space, not only transforming the structure, but also shaping it into extensive multiverses of signifiers. Many sheets contain written and illustrated text from literary science fiction.
In her work Black Matters (2011/2017), Scheper’s drawing pens (black Edding and Fineline pens) devour the novel Accelerando by Charles Stross (published in 2005). An amorphous black wall drawing and hundreds of letter objects create individual spaces based on the blurb from the book. Handwritten parts of the novel are stored on a triptych of paper webs effervescing in the space. By overwriting and partially erasing the original text, visions manifest themselves of a world in which human history now continues as a coupling with nanotechnology, and the universe with all the bodies it contains has become an accelerated living space.
Life: Karen Scheper
Karen Scheper, who was born in 1963, lives in Berlin; studied at University of the Arts Bremen (1991–1997) and studied Art in Context (MA) at Berlin University of the Arts (1999–2003). She prefers to work with drawing and installations.
From 2005 to 2008, performances with Marcelo Aguirre (Spastic Dementia, Evil Spirit) with live and instant drawing, percussion, sound footage and improv. Co-founder of the working groups ‘1-0-1 intersex’ (nGbK Berlin) and ‘Aids-Kunst-Grab’ (artistic representation of the communal AIDS grave at Old St. Matthew’s Cemetery in Berlin). From 2013 to 2016 direction of the Oldenburg drawing festival ‘ausgezeichnet’.
Numerous projects involving young people, working with cultural development.