The Paravent is an Object of the In-Between

The paravent separates – and connects. It creates intimacy without enclosing, structures space without fixing it. Foldable, mobile, permeable, it becomes an instrument of spatial in-between. The paravent has long stood for thresholds, transitions and possibilities – in architecture as much as in art history. As a mobile, permeable element, it undermines the idea of a fixed, closed space and brings processes of dividing, shifting and reordering into focus. It operates through transparency and suggestion: it conceals and reveals simultaneously, arouses curiosity about what lies behind it, and opens up associations between intimacy and staging. Kunstverein Siegen presents with The Paravent is an Object of the In-Between an exhibition that departs from a simple, everyday object. The paravent points not only to architectural but also to art-historical strategies of spatial organisation, making visible that space is not a given structure but something that can be interpreted anew. Drawing on Edward Soja's concept of "Thirdspace", the exhibition understands space as something that emerges through perception, movement and social relations – not as a static order but as a mutable constellation of bodies, materials, lines of sight and forms of cohabitation. The exhibition brings together artistic positions that explore this principle in different ways. Kasia Fudakowski (b. 1985 in London; lives and works in Berlin) works at the intersection of sculpture, installation and performative gesture. With her long-term series Continuouslessness, developed since 2017, she creates a seemingly endless sequence of paravents that form a fragile, contradictory continuum of "not-quite-fitting individual parts". No element could stand alone; each relies on the next. The works shown in Siegen engage with various social and spatial conditions, addressing bureaucracy, language, migration and forms of social dependency. The paravent becomes a metaphor for incompleteness, states of transition and unstable orders. David Douard (b. 1983 in Perpignan; lives and works in Aubervilliers near Paris) develops sculptural works that function like permeable membranes between body, space and digital fragment. From cables, textiles, plexiglass, metal, language and techno-inspired elements, he constructs provisionally-feeling structures that are less self-contained objects than spatial situations. His works evoke fragile infrastructures or relics of urban and digital systems, moving deliberately between the physical and virtual world. Douard is interested in transitions, disruptions and in-between states – in what unfolds between visibility and invisibility, proximity and distance, interface and body. Within the context of the exhibition, his works take up the logic of the paravent as a spatial principle: they fold space and create permeable, unstable constellations. Georgina Hill (b. 1986 in Worcester, UK; lives and works in London) works at the intersection of sculpture, architecture and display. In her installations she takes up familiar architectural elements – room dividers, furniture, decorative structures – and transforms them into poetic, often craftfully precise spatial configurations. Her works address how objects become carriers of memory, intimacy and cultural coding, and what social relations inscribe themselves into materials and spatial orders. The resulting installations are simultaneously shelter, stage and projection surface. Hill is particularly interested in the emotional and atmospheric dimension of architecture, examining how spaces are shaped by personal experience, background and collective memory. The exhibition is supported by Kunststiftung NRW.