In-N-Out at Die Wand. EIGEN+ART Lab for Rheingau Founders / Berlin

#4 Anita Mikas & Markus Liehr / In-N-Out

16 May – 03 August 2018 

EIGEN+ART Lab for Rheingau Founders 
Oranienstrasse 185
10999 Berlin
Germany

Installation view
Installation view


Anita Mikas – The Frontier, 12 x 15 x 10 cm, mixed media, 2018
Anita Mikas – The Aladin, 12 x 20 x 10 cm, mixed media 2018
Anita Mikas – The Aladin, 12 x 20 x 10 cm, mixed media 2018
Anita Mikas – The Aladin, 12 x 20 x 10 cm, mixed media 2018
Anita Mikas – The Aladin, 12 x 20 x 10 cm, mixed media 2018
Anita Mikas – The Aladin, 12 x 10 x 15 cm, mixed media, 2018

Anita Mikas – The Sands, 12 x 10 x 10 cm, mixed media, 2018
Markus Liehr – High Limit Room, 375 x 560 cm, acrylic on carpet, 2018
Anita Mikas – The Frontier, 12 x 15 x 10 cm, mixed media, 2018

Anita Mikas – The Sands, 12 x 10 x 10 cm, mixed media, 2018

Markus Liehr – High Limit Room, 375 x 560 cm, acrylic on carpet, 2018

Exhibition view
Anita Mikas – In and Out, 200 x 160 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2018



Our project began last year with our travel to Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Going to another, faraway country we expected to experience so called culture shock. We were ready for the unknown. But California turned out even more intense and surprising than anything we could have imagined.
Los Angeles is a perfect example of culture salad bowl: all nations – Spanish, Mexican, Asian – are all mixed together. This mixture has an enormous impact on our own life in Europe.
Since the beginning of 20th century California rules the movie industry. Its productions have profound effect on perception of fiction and even reality of millions of people on the globe.
When we came to LA we realized we knew the culture better than we expected. We already knew the rules of this expensive, made-for-cars place by hard. We were not shocked, when our flatmate told us that her dog is depressed and has to take pills every day. We were not shocked even when the sound of a helicopter woke us almost every night.
Going to Venice beach we already knew the type of bars by the beach and found it normal to drive on the skateboard along with the dog. We saw it all in movies, on the Internet, we read about it in the books. Renting a sport car and going to Las Vegas we already knew how the road will look like, going to a casino we felt like in a well known place.
The only really surprising point was the question: who are we in this situation? We were not a movie viewers or book readers anymore. This time it was reality and we were participating in it. We did know what we probably should do and how to react but didn’t know if it was our real reaction. Somehow we played ourself, trying to fit to the community.
This is the clue of our project. The works that we created are our reactions to the unknown and the well-known place at the same time. It is about finding ourself in the situation that we know only from media. We raise the question: is it possible to leave the West Coast known from mass media and start to explore the real one?

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Die Wand. is a joint, ongoing project of Rheingau Founders and EIGEN + ART Lab, with the underlying idea, to bring the young art and start-up scene together in order to introduce contemporary art to young founders. We want to test this idea as a format with one wall and one artist.

© Photo Credits: Thomas Krüger