Eugenie Shinkle celebrates the publication of her first short fiction text, written for Finnish photographic artist Elina Brotherus’s new publication, Brotherus – Block – Beuys: Potato Planting – Transformations.

In her analysis of Beuys, Elina Brotherus changes perspectives and plays with the female gaze on the iconic German artist. 

The well-known Finnish photo and video artist Elina Brotherus (b. 1972) deals with iconic motifs from art history as well as with the reinterpretation of Fluxus actions and event scores, the recordings of performances. In this context, the artist has also restaged Joseph Beuys’s action Kartoffelernte (Potato Harvest), which originally took place in 1977 in front of the gallery of René Block, an important champion of FLUXUS and Beuys. At the Museum Schloss Moyland and the Joseph Beuys Archive, Elina Brotherus researched Beuys, Block, and Beuys’s performance photographer Ute Klophaus. New photographs and video installations of a fictional character were created at locations visited by Beuys, as well as new works with René Block, which are being shown for the first time in this publication and in the exhibition of the same name.

Brotherus – Block – Beuys is published by Kehrer-Verlag and includes texts by Ina Brandes, Thomas Heyden, Antje-Britt Mählmann and Eugénie Shinkle as well as interviews with René Block, Elina Brotherus and Emil Schult (Kraftwerk). With approx. 240 pages and 120 illustrations, the exhibition is comprehensively documented. Book launch: November 2023 for Paris Photo.

Join Eugenie Shinkle and curator René Block for the launch of ‘Brotherus – Block – Beuys’ at the Grand Palais Ephémère (Kehrer Verlag stand – Booth P33) as part of Paris Photo on Thursday 9th November.