For ‘Berlin Bins’ Josefine Reisch presents a series of new paintings based on bins found in shopping malls in Berlin. Each shopping mall is home to a collection of bins that were specially designed or selected to fit in with its style, each having been developed in connection with specific historical ideals. Josefine has produced 1:1 scale paintings of these functional but decorative objects, examining the grandiloquent language they employ to instil feelings of aspiration in shoppers.

Josefine’s elaborate depictions of these ostentatious containers for waste are representative of the surplus culture that is fast fashion: the complex infrastructure framing our consumption, and the often throwaway nature of what we buy. Shopping mall design is one of the many ways our practices of shopping are shaped. ‘Berlin bins’ is an exploration of excess, waste, cycles of aspiration, and the endless recycling of trends and designs.

Josefine Reisch's work examines historical contexts to outline social hierarchies from today’s perspective on historiography. To question the value and validity of a popularised cultural “heritage”, she reassembles historical moments and figures into jumbled compositions, much like a musical medley. Deploying representational mediums such as trompé-l'œil painting, portraiture, and textiles, the artist pays special attention to the biography as a genre that illustrates the shape-shifting, ambivalent, and often fictionalised character of the past. Challenging the patriarchal subjectivity of mainstream and material culture, she undermines conventional artistic depictions of femininity. Thereby Reisch’s work triggers new readings and uncertainty within the déjà-vu. 

Josefine Reisch lives and works in Berlin. She graduated from Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2013 and completed her MFA Fine Arts from Goldsmith University of London in 2017. In 2021 Josefine was awarded the Research Grant of the Berlin Senate for European Culture and this year a Grant of Stiftung Kunstfonds. Her work has recently been shown at Standard (Oslo), Oslo; Nassauischer Kunstverein, Weisbaden; Parliament, Paris and Beursschouwburg, Brussels.