Since our bodies are our first point of contact with the world, my artistic work questions social norms, constructed perception systems and expectations of the human form, especially the female body. Using collage bodies as placeholders, I am concerned with reconstruction through deconstruction in the areas of identity, body politics, body optimisation and body dissolution. Formally, I expand the classical collage to include the techniques of photography, video, sculpture, installation and painting.
hallo@caromantke.studio, Instagram, CV/Impressum

My work “HUMAN” consists of human collage fragments interwoven with one another. It is a vast network that hangs in the space as a three-dimensional installation, resembling a kind of human topology. A sound track adds an auditory dimension to the work. The creative process behind “HUMAN” continues so that it is constantly expanding in dimension. I keep collecting and weaving, and see the project as a meditative craft, like knitting or crocheting a large, human blanket; a constantly expanding, meandering body. HUMAN

It’s hot. It’s steamy. You’re not really sure where you are. You’re not sure about what you see, about the sounds you’re hearing. The information that you discern seems misstated. Are you delusional? Are you victim of hallucination? At the bar, you pick a strawberry but the flavor seems to be more pungent than fruity. Hokuspokus invites you to enter an artistic chimera whose works call on you to squint, peek, blink, and otherwise contort your vision. We conceive this exhibition as a menagerie of visual traps, filled with artworks that challenge our perceptions and make us question the supposed truth in what we see, and to therefore consider the possibility of multiple realities. We want to give an enchantment, a counterpart to reality and an invitation to open your third eye.HOKUSPOKUS

A smooth bridge of the nose, a hard-edged facial cube, a full-bodied mould infestation — the solo exhibition ‘Bodybuildings’ at the Julia Waldman Gallery in Hamburg shows Caro Mantke's three-dimensional body collages. The source material for the works are photographs of women from fashion magazines of the early nineties. Glossy, supple lips, white teeth and firm breasts are dismantled and reassembled into angular objects and diffuse sculptures. […] It is not only the female body that disappears in the collages, but also its history of being a harmless, pure standard. […] The body politics aspect cannot be overlooked in Caro's works. The three-dimensionality transforms the silent works into living forms that demand space and visibility. In the end, the question remains: what is collage and what is dismantling here, the images of women's bodies in the context of fashion magazines or the resulting 3D objects? KÖRPERVERSATZSTÜCKLAGER, by Claudia Raupach Bodybuildings

The ‘REFLEX’ series of works explores (body) images that are socially constructed, as if stored in a collective memory. Drawing on so-called ‘Rorschach test’, which were used in psychoanalysis, the series focuses on the politics of the body. What do we see and what do we not see, and to what extent are our visual habits shaped by socialisation?REFLEX

“176 Portraits” is an archive with the motto “quantity over quality”, consisting of deconstructed faces taken from fashion magazines. The collages, created using analogue techniques, are transformed back into a digital format and presented as a video. Deconstruction is a proven means in art of questioning and decontextualising the existing, literally destroying it and then reassembling it in a different form, thus reinterpreting it. The fragmentation of photographs through collage is a conscious omission, a deliberate exclusion of parts of reality, in the resulting negative space of which imagination becomes possible.176 Portraits

“POSTHUM” is a project that explores the dissolution of the human body. “We must create new social, ethical and discursive forms of subject formation so that we are prepared for the profound changes we are experiencing. We must therefore learn to conceive of ourselves differently. I see the posthuman entanglement as an opportunity to foster alternative ways of thinking, forms of knowledge and self-images. The posthuman situation compels us to reflect critically and creatively on who or what we actually are in the process of becoming.” Rosi BraidottiPOSTHUM