Bettina Pousttchi—Horizons

Bettina Pousttchi works primarily with sculpture and photography. Her site-specific photographic installations consistently challenge and expand the formal and conceptual possibilities of photography, often covering entire building facades. Her sculptural works also engage with the urban environment. They frequently take functional elements of urban furniture, such as bollards, crowd barriers, or bicycle racks, as their starting point.

In the series ›Vertical Highways‹, Pousttchi transforms crash barriers into vertically oriented sculptures whose striking presence emerges from the reorientation and deformation of industrial materials. The vertical alignment and modular use of prefabricated elements shift the viewer’s spatial perception and establish an architectural reference. Through interventions such as bending, pressing, or repainting, Pousttchi removes these everyday objects from their regulatory function and original context, turning them into markers of transformation, fluid structures, and dissolving boundaries.

Bettina Pousttchi is among the leading contemporary artists in Germany and has also gained wide international recognition, particularly in the United States. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, and the Arts Club of Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at MoCA Shanghai, the Aurora Museum Shanghai, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, and Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich.