about
"Tine Kindermann, the singing good fairy and clearly a visual artist with a fine sense of mystery" -- Jennifer Dunning, New York Times, January 2002
Tine Kindermann is a Berlin-born visual artist and singer living in New York. For the past decade her work has focused on creating intimate scenarios inside of boxes, reminiscent of the European tradition of "Guckkasten" (peephole installation) and Wunderkammer. Made from drawers and crates found in the streets of New York's Lower East Side, with figurines sculpted by Tine Kindermann, these miniature worlds invite the viewer to participate as a voyeur in a story told without worlds, in which the dollhouse format often belies the severity of what appears to have happened.
An important part of this work has been a series based on Grimm's Fairy Tales. When Tine Kindermann revisited the stories from her childhood, she was startled and fascinated by the darkness in them. Many of these stories have poignant moments in which the hero or heroine experienced an event that turned their lives around. At the core of these moments lies a terrible stillness, time stopping for a heartbeat. These moments, and the feelings associated with their implied consequences, are what the artist tries to capture in images.
In the spring of 2001 Tine Kindermann, Frank London and Lorin Sklamberg first performed a program of old German folk songs at Philip Alan Gallery in New York City as part of an exhibit of the fairy tale peephole installations. Drawing inspiration from the darker side of folklore, both artwork and songs deal with the timeless themes of love and loss, longing and loneliness. A CD of the songs,"schamlos schön", featuring Marc Ribot, Greg Cohen, Glenn Patscha and Frank London, is being released in September 2008.
Aside from the dioramas, Tine Kindermann has been working with photography and video, most recently producing animations with artist mornography to accompany a theatrical concert production of L.I. Peretz's "A Night in the Old Marketplace".
Tine Kindermann's art has been shown at NY Studio Gallery, Metaphor Contemporary Art, NYU Galleries, the Toy Theatre Museum, the Manhattan Borough President's Office (all New York City), Kurt im Hirsch (Berlin) and many other places.