Re-Discovery 6
Gerry Bibby, David Hammons, Daniela Knorr
curated by Martin Germann
Autocenter –
Contemporary Art Berlin
Leipziger Str. 56
26.9. – 31.10.2015
Gerry Bibby, Outtake/Curious(Yellow), 2014
David Hammons, Phat Free, 1995/99, Color Video loop 5:20 min
David Hammons with Bruna Esposito, Materasso addormentato, 1992 (with sound)
Gerry Bibby, Howl, 2015, 9 pieces, epoxy, foil, ink on stainless steel grid
Gerry Bibby, Radiant # 4, 2007
Daniela Knorr
Photos Roman Maerz
new work by the artists Gerry Bibby, David Hammons; and Daniela Knorr.
It intends to set opacity as a membrane for encounter, or, to hand over
to the philosopher Edouard Glissant: “I demand for all the right to
opacity. It is not necessary to me to understand the other, that is to
reduce the other to my own model of transparency, in order to live and
build with that other.” Or, as it may sometimes be the case, conditions
permitting: “When you find the word, without limits […] you go crazy
shouting it.”
Two works by American artist David Hammons (*1943,
Springfield/IL, USA), one of them a collaborative work, on loan from the
collection of the S.M.A.K. in Ghent, serve as both backdrop and
soundtrack for the exhibition. Both created in the 1990s, they integrate
modes of performing and refusal in an elegant manner: Materasso Addormentato (1991, with Bruna Esposito) is a snoring mattress sculpture, fastened in a roll with a tie; his video Phat Free
(1995/99) sets the beat, showing a man kicking a can down a New York
street, extending Hammons’ studio into the city, where many of his
ephemeral works originated, and where echoes of his affinities with
histories such as the Black Power movement and Free Jazz reside.
Core
material for Gerry Bibby’s (*1977, Melbourne, AU) activities are, so to
say, words and furniture, contextual polarities between which he
stimulates processes of exchange that scrutinise values assigned to
gender, place, and, of course, art. Collaging sculpture, performance and
text, he agitates social and spatial complexes, asking them to behave
other to themselves. Here, Bibby arrests revision in the service of the
now, this exhibition, by placing it in a fixed period of time, where the
both near and distant past haunt the passage of the year 2015. This
year will comprise of 13 moons, and if the opening credit to
Fassbinder’s 1978 film “In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden” were to be taken as
truth, these years witness catastrophe for those who experience them.
The series of lampshade sculptures by Bibby, HOWL (2015); which
together form a spatial concrete poem are designated as moments of
shadow around the nine full moons already passed this year.
This
materialisation of work by Daniela Knorr follows, in sculptural terms,
the logics of a participative, process-oriented and speculative mould.
Just like Lacan’s little a it opens space for imagination. One piece
proposed by the artist is expected to be on display from October 14,
which is according to the travel schedule of its current owner Prof. Dr.
Markus Gabriel, Bonn, documentation provided near the exhibition
entrance.
This is the last issue within Autocenter’s exhibition
series “Re-Discoveries”, and is curated by Martin Germann, with the
assistance of Ory Dessau.
With kind support of S.M.A.K., Municipal
Museum for contemporary Art, Ghent where Martin Germann works as Senior
Curator since 2012.