Born in 1981 in Berlin, Kathrin Sonntag received a BA and an MA in visual arts from the Universität der Künste Berlin (2000–06). Sonntag distorts, refracts, and fragments quotidian objects in order to inspire her audience to untether their preconceived ways of looking and seeing. Her pictures regularly confound perception of illusionistic space and undermine assumptions about truth in photography. Encompassing sculpture, photography, film, and drawing, her work offers a complex analysis of the nature of objects and the division between fiction and reality. Using stools, tripods, tables, and mirrors to create unusual perspectives, Sonntag’s installations strip meaning from readily identifiable objects via photographic experiments within the confines of her studio. Mittnacht (2008) comprises eighty-one slides of found images of paranormal phenomena photographed among the artist’s studio tools and furniture. The supernatural elements are enhanced by their disorienting placement within the studio, which both creates illusions and allows errors and smudges in processing to cast an eerie shadow on certain images in the series. In Wood Mirror (2010), a small mirror appears to point outward toward the viewer but fails to reflect the expected image, instead revealing a nearby object. Similarly, in the photograph flic-flac #2 (2009), mirrors distort the viewer’s perspective of the coffee mug depicted, causing one to question how a mirror can simultaneously reveal, reflect, and conceal. Through such manipulation of material, Sonntag challenges the infallibility of documentary photography and uncovers inconsistencies within the nature of the visual record. In 2009, Sonntag was awarded the Dr. Georg and Josi Guggenheim Prize. The primary reference for the artist’s subsequent exhibition was the Christie’s catalogue from the auction of the Guggenheims’ modern art collection after their deaths. The images that comprise Annex (2010) depict the catalogue opened to various spreads and arranged in casual tableaux around Sonntag’s studio. The objects placed on or near the book’s pages find visual affinities and echoes in the modernist masterworks pictured within. Sonntag received a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD, Deutscher Akademischer Austaunschdienst) research scholarship in 2011. Her work has been installed in solo presentations at a range of international institutions including Swiss Institute – Contemporary Art, New York (2009); Kunstverein in Hamburg (2011); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2013); and Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2013). Her work has also been featured in multiple group exhibitions, including Leopards in the Temple, SculptureCenter, New York (2010); Moscow International Biennial for Young Art (2012); At Work, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Germany (2013); Pictures in Time, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2014); and Photo-Poetics: An Anthology, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2015). Sonntag lives and works in Berlin.