Jens Kothe, Tammo Lünemann, Kai Borsutzky / Drink Liquid
January 26 – 1 March, 2020
Kunsthaus Essen Rübezahlstr. 33 45134 Essen
The exhibition drink liquid brings together three positions that transcend genre boundaries, one-dimensional interpretative attributions and style definitions in order to seek instead proximity to neighbouring disciplines and to stage mixed-media forms in an effort to open up new paths of understanding and self-definition for art.
In doing so, Tammo Lünemann, Jens Kothe and Kai Borsutzky create hybrid art forms that allow medial interlacings, overlaps and the surprising devaluations and reassessments of found objects of daily use.
In the work of Jens Kothe, an elaborately crafted sofa does not stand on the floor ready for use, but rather hovers like an object on the wall above the floor, above the area of habitual perception and use. The purportedly usable furniture thus undergoes a transformation. Although it is still reminiscent of an object of everyday use, it now mutates into an artistic object. An object that is not only reminiscent of corresponding everyday situations, of furniture or interior decoration, but also acquires a new function through the spatial elevation and distance from the familiar realm of facts.
The physically attractive form of support defined as such now itself becomes a functional component of a staged installation. As such, it serves as a lateral support for a strangely shaped appendix. The background of this peculiar installation is a blurred photograph, which makes the association with interiors and living room sets an intense experience. Standing in front of these objects, one feels immediately physically spoken to. With their tangible materiality, movements and physical forms seem to find a sensual echo within them. One breathes differently in front of these objects, because the physical reference to them has become different. One perceives the banal as something extraordinary, because it appears in impressions in a new context – like a concrete washbasin that suddenly appears in a prominent place, namely an art exhibition, as though this were the most natural thing in the world.
The play with the familiar, the astonishing experience of the profane, charged with new meanings and definitions, plays a key role in the work of Tammo Lünemann. The visitor to the exhibition enters a kind of profaned hall of fame, a representative room with floral decorations and tapestries. The only difference is that opulent bouquets of flowers are not placed in vessels made of precious metal; in this case, they are instead colourful, uniformly designed plastic fly swatters, some of which are decorated with advertising logos, familiar from sports, sweaty saunas and active leisure activities. Tammo Lünemann deciphers our everyday life and experiences with at times surprising results. He analyses the phenomena of our everyday world in terms of their aesthetic and functional significance, their own narrative and their integration into functional contexts. By integrating them into systems of artistic reference, they are stripped of their everyday suitability and banality and thus acquire something sublime, a new certainty of effect and perception that is only remotely reminiscent of their original meaning.
Tammo Lünemann seduces the viewer into sensual imagination and fictional projection, fed by the representational value and the unaltered recognisability of the materials used. When viewed, both merge into a complex, emblematic system of references with an open diversity of meanings.
The essence of memory plays a key role in many works by Kai Borsutzky. The artist creates memory tableaus, fictional places of remembrance in the form of large-scale installations composed of individual works. The organisation and arrangement of his installations within the space reflects the complexity of memory. When we remember something, this memory generally has a multimedia character. We thus do not rely on a single, detached sense, but in most cases recall various aspects of the memory. In accordance with the notion of making the complexity of the remembered experience sensually tangible, he makes use of various media which combine to form a meaningful whole. Three-dimensional objects appear next to paintings and photographs, which are occasionally overlaid with abstract drawings. The drawings themselves often consist of empty spaces, areas scratched out of the picture and thus erased – faded and diffuse shallows of memory.
– Uwe Schramm
Kai Borsutzky, *1987, lives and works in Essen and Bochum 2013-19 Dipl. Fine Arts and Masterclass Prof. Ellen Gallagher, Academy Düsseldorf, Bachelor of Arts, Folkwang Universität der Künste// Selected Exhibitions:2020 group „In Order of Appearance“ K21, Düsseldorf// group „Drink Liquid“ Kunsthaus Essen//2018 group „Augenschein“BBK Kunstforum, Düsseldorf// 2017 „Traces“ Till Richter Museum, Buggenhagen// „Akademie [Arbeitstitel] Kunsthalle Düsseldorf // 2015 „Aus der Zeit fallen“ Sanaa Gebäude, Zeche Zollverein, Essen// 2014 “Lost in the Mall“ Offspace Alte Mitte, Essen//2013 “Was übrig bleibt“ Galerie am Dellplatz, Duisburg// 2012„Unter Staub und Asche„ Offspace Kunstraum Unten, Bochum
Tammo Lünemann, *1988, lives and works in Cologne// 2014 Meisterschüler Professor Georg Herold// 2015 Dipl. Fine Arts Kunstakademie Düsseldorf// Selected Exhibitions:„Schwalbennester“, Verlagshaus Kleinheinrich, Münster// 2016 „es schickt sich“, Parkhaus Malkasten, Düsseldorf//„es schickt sich“, Keith, Berlin// 2017 „nothing to hide“ sans titre, Paris// „Secession“ Melange, Köln// „Bildende Kunst und Literatur“ Kulturbahnhof Eller, Düsseldorf// „Canard au Sans“ sans titre, Paris// 2018 „french kissing lampreys“ Jagla, Köln// „Aftermath“ Setareh Gallery, Düsseldorf// „Bafouille“ real positive – Belsunce Projects, Marseille// 2019 „on intimacy. bodies of matter“ RFK, Düsseldorf// „Avanti“ Michael Horbach Stiftung, Köln// 2020 „drink liquid“ Kunsthaus Essen, Essen
Jens Kothe, *1985, lives and works in Bochum, Germany, 2013-17: masterclass of Andreas Gursky, Academy Düsseldorf, 2009-2011: National Sculptor School, Oberammergau, 2007-09: TU Dortmund, Architecture. Selected Exhibitions: (group, 2020) „drink liquid“ Kunsthaus Essen, Essen// „Squish“ at Efremidis Gallery, Berlin// (solo, 2019) „Element System“ at Berthold Pott, Cologne// Jens Kothe at Pfirsich, Cologne (2019), “On intimacy” at RFK, Düsseldorf (group, 2019), “Insane in the membrane” at Philara Collection, Düsseldorf (group, 2018), “Towards a theory of powerful things” at Rod Barton, London (group, 2018), “Die Grosse” at Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (group, 2018), “Jens Kothe” at Hyperraum E.V. Bochum (solo, 2017), “Jens Kothe” solo at Kunsthalle Bochum (solo, 2017), Ruhrtriennale Bochum (group, 2015), “En el Castillo” at Museo Internacional de Arte Contemporaneo, Spain (group, 2014)
Images courtesy the artist and Setareh X
Photos: Robert Oisin Cusack
Laura Sachs works in a unique way with bodies of images composed of volatile and solid materials.
Accentuated with metal strips or completely enclosed in aluminium frames, the canvases assert
themselves as multi-perspective objects in space.
In the “Noon” series of works, oil paint is pushed through the canvas in a first step, the fabric is then
detached from the stretcher frame and restretched with its original backside facing the front. As in a
kind of frottage process, paint particles and dust are also removed from the studio floor. Finally, Laura Sachs adds thin powder-coated metal strips in different positions, which run around the edges of the picture and seem to fix the canvas. At the same time, they prove to be basic elements that stabilize the composition of the entire body of the image.
In the “Sidenote” works, a grid is first painted with canvas primer, which only becomes subtly visible on the canvas, which at first glance appears pure black, when a black monochrome colour surface is applied. Between the canvas and the aluminium frame surrounding it, a piece of white fabric is inserted in each case, which gives the work a compositional structure, similar in function to the metal strips. However, a certain element of coincidence is always present in these controlled processes perse. The artist reacts to changes occurring during the painting process with considered interventions and settings. In this way of working between control and chance, “dialogues” repeatedly arise within her spectrum of forms, colours and materials, which ultimately lead to clear formulations and balanced compositions.
At first glance, Laura Sachs’ works appear serial, but upon closer inspection they turn out to be
painted, composed, and constructed unique pieces that provide clues to their underlying work
processes. In this way, her method of working and her viewpoint differ from that of the
representatives of Minimal Art, to whom her works only seem close at first glance. In this way she
succeeds in enriching the post-minimalist discourse on images through conscious shifts in context.
The representatives of the first purely American art movement, which became known as Minimal Art,
such as Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris or, within painting, Frank Stella, were concerned with turning away from the idea of the creative subject, with the renunciation of expression, content and readable craftsmanship – towards a pure expressiveness of form, colour, materiality and spatial reference. The aspect of the serial and the associated industrial producibility of
a work of art have always been part of this view. To which artists like Blinky Palermo or Imi Knoebel
already reacted in their own way in the 1960s. This art historical frame of reference is also part of
Laura Sachs’ artistic self-conception.
In her reduced formal language, the objecthood of her pictures, and the apparent seriality of her
works, Laura Sachs refers to the questions posed by prominent thought leaders. By focusing on the
handwritten aspects, the processual nature of her works, and even references to the place where the
picture was made, she expands the discourse beyond this and in this way formulates an independent
and characteristic artistic position.
A logic of resemblance and of difference, of contradiction and identity, even of continuity and discontinuity, in short a naive logic of two choices, such as true/false, even if we set the two theses together so that they resonate through synthesis, ambiguity, paradox or the inexpressible, why should such a logic be able to account for anything at all, when we have known for a long time that it cannot account for the simplest things, the weakest knowledge? Every state of things is already too complex for it. And every elementary system. A fortiori, every even slightly complicated system. A fortiori, the most complex real and conceivable one, like history. A fortiori, if we try to understand how a system is formed.
Lewis Gardens, High Street, Colchester, Essex CO1 1JH
Unboxing Alex Frost is an exhibition of videos and sculptures made from products that feed our ‘on-the-go’ lifestyle, like frozen pizzas and supermarket sandwiches. It includes videos from Frost’s ‘Wet Unboxing’ series, in which meals, snacks, protein shakes, vitamin tablets and energy drinks are submerged and unpacked underwater.
Alex Frost is an artist based in London. His art captures an optimised and energised life ‘on-the-go’. Whether making objects for a gallery or producing videos for online circulation the life he encapsulates is one where consumption rules all life.
I At noon the Heart is most active, while the Liver is maximally active after midnight. Time in the body. The Heart moves the hands. The Spleen opens into the mouth and manifests on the lips. Functions in the body. Anger with the Liver, happiness with the Heart, thoughtfulness with the Heart and Spleen, sadness with the Heart and Lungs, fear with the Kidneys and the Heart, surprise with the Heart and the Gallbladder, and anxiety with the Heart and the Lungs. Sentiment in the body. Cells with limited life span: skin, nails, oocytes, blood cells. 10 or 70 organs you can live without. Headlines in the body.
Organs: the fuel, the function, the movement, the daily rhythms of activity, their amount. Things paired. Things dried. Things absolutely needed.
II They deal with time and love, as matter and forces that transform bodies, friendships, ideas, institutions, interests, objects and subjects. They become a landscape of metabolic activity – of an amount of light that enters a room, of an amount of energy that leaves a room, of a certain amount of intention, the minimum amount of meaningful gesture.
They are physical traces of a desire, or an impulse, glimpses of locations and surroundings. They provide evidence of personal and material limitations.
They are also records of affect, meditations, manifestos, emotional contours of life during increasingly precarious times. They are a set of conscious decisions manifested as a set of compulsions. They are self-generating, but also self-consuming. They create certain temperatures that dominate hormones and rational thinking. They suggest that careful attention to the tiny and the immediate can be a survival strategy.
They are essays on forces, or their lack of, and on rejection. They function regardless of sickness and quitting. They are usual things. They are found.
III The works are installed as ensembles of Kammermusik, one for each room of the gallery.
On the ground floor, two grids of lights – fluorescent bulbs at the end of their useful lives, in square aluminium ceiling fixtures foraged from defunct offices in Athens. They light against each other. On the upper floor, a set of oscillating fans operates out of season. They reproduce the sound of key sets clinging, as one opens a door. On the walls, a series of portraits made in commercial photography studios in Athens. They are shown at the maximum size that was available in that moment. Energy is released in order to be made available for alternate endeavors. Molecules reconstitute elsewhere, otherwise.
The works and other remnants from the space’s various past lives – nicotine-stained wood, holes on the floor, debris behind the walls – will remain on view from mid-January until March.
IV CLUB MOSS
Worse, right side, from right to left, from above downward, from 4 to 8pm; from heat or warm room, hot air, bed. Better, by motion, after midnight, from warm food and drink, on getting cold, from being uncovered.
Pains come and go suddenly. Little things annoy, afraid to be alone.
Hurried when eating. Cannot bear to see anything new. Cannot read what she writes. Sadness in morning on awaking. Shakes head without apparent cause. Twists face and mouth. Worse from 4 to 8pm. Sees only one-half of an object. Eyes half open during sleep. Dyspepsia due to farinaceous and fermentable food, cabbage, beans, etc. Aversion to bread, etc.
Food tastes sour. Desire for sweet things. Eating ever so little creates fullness. Cannot eat oysters. Cannot lie on left side. Limbs go to sleep. Twitching and jerking. Starting in sleep. Dreams of accidents.
This drug is inert until the spores are crushed.
V THE WHITE OF THE EYES
The PhD researcher from Spain, is in Singapore to study the eyes of orangutans in Borneo.
I took a photograph of the photograph of the two pairs of eyes, hung above his desk in the Department of Biological Science at the National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4.
The white of our eyes is several times larger than those of other primates, which makes it much easier to see where the eyes, as opposed to the head, are pointed. Trying to explain this trait leads us into one of the deepest and most controversial topics in the modern study of human evolution: the evolution of cooperation.
It was a close-up of a close-up of the eyes of females, pinned to the wall on the right side of his desk, in Singapore.
BAITBALL (01) “I’ll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you”
Curated by: Catbox Contemporary, Davide Da Pieve, Essenza Club, Flip Project, Ginny Project, Harlesden High Street & Twee Whistler, Like A Little Disaster, Felice Moramarco, Nights, PANE project, PIA Studio, Progetto, Rhizome
Parking Garage, Studioconcreto, The Sunroom, Ultrastudio.
January 5 – March 15 – 2020
Palazzo San Giuseppe, in via Mulini 2 Polignano a
Mare
Michaela
Zuge-Bruton / Progetto (Lecce) – Photo L.A.L.D.
Daniel Van
Straalen / Ultrastudio (Pescara – Los Angeles) – Photo L.A.L.D.
Daniel Van
Straalen / Ultrastudio (Pescara – Los Angeles) – Photo L.A.L.D.
Daniel Van
Straalen / Ultrastudio (Pescara – Los Angeles) – Photo L.A.L.D.
BAITBALL01, Installation view. –
Photo L.A.L.D.
John Roebas, Keren Cytter, Kayla
Ephros / The Sunroom (Richmond) – Photo L.A.L.D.
Keren Cytter, / The Sunroom
(Richmond) – Photo L.A.L.D.
Lorenzo Lunghi / Harlesden High
Street Gallery (London) & Twee Whistler – Photo L.A.L.D.
Lorenzo Lunghi / Harlesden High
Street Gallery (London) & Twee Whistler – Photo L.A.L.D.
Lorenzo Lunghi / Harlesden High
Street Gallery (London) & Twee Whistler – Photo L.A.L.D.
BAITBALL01, Installation view –
Photo L.A.L.D.
BAITBALL01, Installation view –
Photo L.A.L.D.
Alessandro Fogo, Neckar Doll /
Harlesden High Street Gallery (London) & Twee Whistler – Photo L.A.L.D.
Neckar Doll / Harlesden High Street
Gallery (London) & Twee Whistler – Photo L.A.L.D.
Viola Morini / Harlesden High Street Gallery (London) & Twee Whistler – Photo L.A.L.D.
BAITBALL01, Installation view –
Photo L.A.L.D.
Davide Dicorato / Harlesden High Street Gallery (London) & Twee Whistler – Photo L.A.L.D.
Nicola Gobbetto / Harlesden High Street Gallery (London) & Twee Whistler – Photo L.A.L.D.
Diana Gheorghiu / Harlesden High
Street Gallery (London) & Twee Whistler – Photo L.A.L.D.
Avery Noyes / Harlesden High Street Gallery (London) & Twee Whistler – Photo L.A.L.D.
Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski / Harlesden High Street Gallery (London) & Twee Whistler – Photo L.A.L.D.
Julie
Grosche and Christine Navin / Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare) – Photo
L.A.L.D.
Julie
Grosche and Christine Navin / Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare) – Photo
L.A.L.D.
Julie
Grosche and Christine Navin / Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare) – Photo
L.A.L.D.
Julie
Grosche and Christine Navin / Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare) – Photo
L.A.L.D.
Julie
Grosche and Christine Navin / Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare) – Photo
L.A.L.D.
Virginia
Lee Montgomery / Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare) – Photo L.A.L.D.
Virginia
Lee Montgomery / Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare) – Photo L.A.L.D.
Alessandro
Di Pietro and Enrico Boccioletti / Felice Moramarco – Photo L.A.L.D.
Alessandro
Di Pietro and Enrico Boccioletti / Felice Moramarco – Photo L.A.L.D.
Guido Segni
/ Davide Da Pieve – Photo L.A.L.D.
Guido Segni
/ Davide Da Pieve – Photo L.A.L.D.
Virginia Lee
Montgomery / Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare) – Photo L.A.L.D.
Virginia Lee
Montgomery / Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare) – Photo L.A.L.D.
BAITBALL (01)
“I’ll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you”
January 5 – March 15 – 2020
Curated by:
Catbox Contemporary (New York) – Davide Da Pieve – Essenza Club (Nomadic) – Flip Project (Napoli) – Ginny Project (London) – Harlesden High Street (London) & Twee Whistler – Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare) – Felice Moramarco – Nights (Nomadic) – PANE project (Milano) – PIA Studio (Lecce) – Progetto (Lecce)– Rhizome Parking Garage (Online) – Studioconcreto (Lecce) – The Sunroom (Richmond) – Ultrastudio (Pescara / Los Angeles).
Artists:
Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski, Ambra Abbaticola, ASAFO Black (Nuna Adisenu- Doe, Scrapa, Jeffrey Otoo, Samuel Kortey Baah, Denyse Gawu-Mensah, Larry Bonćhaka), ASMA, Monia Ben Hamouda, Ludovic Beillard, Vitaly Bezpalov, Andrew Birk, Enrico Boccioletti, Melanie Bonajo, Benni Bosetto, Cécilia Brueil, Ian Bruner, Marco Bruzzone, Paolo Bufalini, Pierluigi Calignano, Katharina Cameron, Costanza Candeloro, Finn Carstens, Filippo Cecconi, Guendalina Cerruti, Keren Cytter, Edoardo Ciaralli, Riccardo D’avola-Corte, Stine Deja – Zoë De Luca, Maria Adele Del Vecchio, Lila De Magalhaes, Davide Dicorato, Derek M. F. Di Fabio, Alessandro Di Pietro, Neckar Doll, Loki Dolor, Don Elektro, Clementine Edwards, Kayla Ephros, Adham Faramawy, Cleo Fariselli, Emilio Ferro, Olga Fedorova, Alessandro Fogo, Léo Fourdriner, Michele Gabriele, Paolo Gabriotti, Tommaso Gatti, Diana Gheorghiu, Naomi Gilon, Marco Giordano, Nicola Gobbetto, Serena Grassi, Julie Grosche, Jennyfer Haddad, Jan S. Hansen, Philip Hinge, Helena Hladilová, Joey Holder, Ellie Hunter, Eloise Hawser, Angelique Heidler, Lena Henke, Botond Keresztesi, Keiu Krikmann, Andrea Kvas, Virginia Lee Montgomery, Per-Oskar Leu, Lucia Leuci, Abby Lloyd, Ula Lucińska + Michał Knychaus, Lorenzo Lunghi, Tamara Macarthur, Dalia Maini, Rachele Maistrello, Viola Morini, Max Motmans, Marco Musarò, Christine Navin, Avery Noyes, Alessandro Nucci, Francesco Pacelli, Nuno Patrício, Emma Pryde, Anni Puolakka, Agostino Quaranta, John Roebas, Andrea Sala, Giulio Scalisi, Jens Settegren, Siggi Sekira, Guido Segni, Helin Shahmaran, Namsal Siedlecki, SGOMENTO (Matteo Pomati, Marco Pio Mucci), Anna Slama, Livia Spinga Mantovani, Ruben Spini, Martin Soto Climent, Mireille Tap, Filippo Tappi, Nik Timková, Philipp Timischl, Natalia Trejbalova, Marta Trektere, Urara Tsuchiya, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Eva Vallania, Daniel Van Straalen, Essi Vesala, Gaia Vincensini, Marco Vitale, Alessandro Vizzini, Gray Wielebinski, Zoë Williams, Yelena Zhelezov, Michaela Zuge-Bruton.
–
A bait ball occurs when small organisms (fish, birds, insects) move tightly packed in a spherical formation around a common center. It is a defensive measure adopted to escape the threat of predators, but it is also a cohesion exercise enhancing the hydro-aerodynamic functions.
A coordinated bait ball that moves and glitters in unison is a mesmerizing image; hundreds or thousands of individuals moving together under radio control or a pre-established choreography. They are even more surprising considering that there is no leader or hierarchy within them.
The “balls” are formed through that spontaneous emergency known as self-organization. It emerges from the bottom upwards, it is an a-centered and non-linear phenomenon, it is an irreversible process, which thanks to the cooperative action of subsystems lead to more complex structures in the global system.
A bait ball rotates, contracts, expands, separates and returns all one, without interruption – single individualities with a hive mind. Cohesion is achieved through the coordination of each individual with respect tothenearest neighbour. A massive coordinated “ball” is made up of thousands of individual actions that make up a single collective movement.
Heterogeneous, “aggregated” patterns in the spatial distributions of individuals are almost universal across living organisms, from bacteria to higher vertebrates. Whereas specific features of aggregations are often visually striking to human eyes, a heuristic analysis based on human vision is usually not sufficient to answer fundamental questions about how and why organisms aggregate and nor about how and why the same associative processes invest “inanimate” elements such as water vapour, sand dunes, galaxies, in which these patterns derive from simple abiotic interactions between the individual components.
The project BAITBALL follows the same natural, mutualistic and universal mechanism to create a hybrid subject/object, a collective dimension; what remains after eliminating the artificial notions of nature and culture. It emerges from the continuous articulation of humans and non-humans, artifacts, inscriptions, animals, plants, spirits, ancestors, gods, organisms and technological prostheses, local and universal, apocalyptic fears and technological hopes.
“us and our technologies in one vast system – to include human and nonhuman agency and understanding, knowing and unknowing, within the same agential soup”.
BAITBAL non è né un oggetto né un soggetto, è una relazione. E’ un fenomeno rappresentabile solo come un’interazione che permette di passare dall’”ottusità dell’io alla fluidità del noi”. Non è un punto fisso, una struttura invariante, ma un essere di circolazione che disegna una rete multicentrata. E’ un reticolo interlacciato che agisce costantemente con tutti gli altri artefici del mondo, animati e inanimati. Al suo interno, le associazioni di umani e non-umani diventano percorsi conoscitivi del mondo perché lo generano con la loro azione reciproca hic et nunc.
BAITBAL is neither an object nor a subject, it is a relationship. It is a phenomenon that can only be represented as an interaction, thus allowing to pass from the obtuseness of “I” to the fluidity of “Us”. It is not a fixed point, an invariant structure, but a circulation being that draws a multi-centric network. It is an interlaced tangle that constantly acts with all the other animated and inanimate makers of the world. Within it, human and non-human associations become cognitive paths of the world because they generate it with their mutual action, hic et nunc.
BAITBAL is a toroid, in it the energy flows from one end, circulates around the center and comes out from the other side. It is balanced, self-regulating, can sustain itself and is made of the same substance surrounding it, like a tornado, a ring of smoke in the air or a vortex in the water. The toroid allows a vortex of energy to flow outwards and then return to the vortex. Thus the energy of a BAITBALL is continually regenerated and at the same time expands self-reflecting on itself.
BAITBALL is not a macro-organism, nor a subsumption of the parts in a superior totality, but an inter-penetration of the entities, a zone of indistinction and transformation.
[…] everything is connected to something, which is connected to something else. While we may all ultimately be connected to one another, the specificity and proximity of connections matters— who we are bound up with and in what ways.
BAITBALL creates lines of growth and movement, it does not live in places but along paths: the “wayfarer” is its original condition. Its dimension is defined based on movement and relationships, its contours are so blurred that its definition becomes possible only from a contextual ecological point of view. Its environment is not simply the “thing” that surrounds it, but rather an inextricable “imbroglio” of lines, a tangle of interlaced paths.
This tangle is the texture of the BAITBALL, beings do not simply occupy the world, they inhabit it, and in so doing – in threading their own paths through the meshwork – they contribute to its ever-evolving weave. Thus we must cease regarding the world as an inert substratum.
If the modern, colonial, naturalist power/knowledge tends to contract the collective’s action in an orderly system (a structure, a chessboard, a cartography), BAITBALL instead extends the perception of reality in a multiverse made of traces, textures and weaves – from the projection of luminous imaginary chains between one star and the other, to the construction of magic seals, to chiroscopy, or to other forms of mantic. This process amplifies the original intertwining of organisms, mythologies, and ecological relationships.
BAITBALL is a place where to live together across difference. Whatever the new arrangements will bring, human exceptionalism and individualism will very likely be a difficult embarrassment for dreaming up new worlds to become-with-others.
The ecosystem that emerges from the perspective of the BAITBALL implies a reconsideration of the Darwinian theory of evolution: instead of considering separate classes as individuals, kingdoms, species, biomes, it is necessary to consider the single entities as vortices in a flow. These entities, in fact, do not exist as stable objects, but continuously mix in an unstoppable confluence of flows. BAITBALL describes a position of translation, mediation and relation that becomes the pivot of a morphological and ontogenetic model.
“The view of evolution as a chronic bloody competition among individuals and species, a popular distortion of Darwin’s notion of “survival of the fittest,” dissolves before a new view of continual cooperation, strong interaction, and mutual dependence among life forms. Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networkiing. Life forms multiplied and complexified by co-opting others, not just by killing them.”
BAITBALL is activated with what we cannot see or foresee with the unexpected, invisible, invisible consequences of collective actions, beyond the limits of the standardization of the possibility of control.
BAITBALL Identity is not an object; it is a process with addresses for different directions and so it can be fixed with a single number. BAITBALL is more like a verb. It repairs, maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself.
BAITBALL is about love, friendship, togetherness and trust, which are always something more and always something less than awareness and knowledge.
BAITBALL is an evolutionary stage, a strategic mechanism to circumvent extinction, to lie to death.
Tools: James Bridle, Donna Haraway, Lynn Margulis, Tim Ingold, Timothy Morton, Bruno Latour, Michel Serres.
All images are courtesy the artist and Bosse & Baum.
Photo credit: Damian Griffiths
Press release
Bosse
& Baum is pleased to present Kneaded, an exhibition of new paintings
and wall murals by the Greek artist Kostas Sklavenitis. This is the artist’s
first exhibition with Bosse & Baum, and in London. In this body of work
Sklavenitis investigates the social significance and symbolism of bread. The
production, sale, and sharing of bread forms a key narrative and symbolic
element, which results in highly emotive works that evoke comparisons with both
prehistoric cave drawings and modernist abstraction, giving the paintings a
sense of historicity and timelessness. The worlds that the artist creates are
bright, filled with light and movement, with figures overlapping and
conjoining, as their lives are impacted by the various processes key to the
production of this essential component within worldwide cultures and societies.
In
the series of three large paintings in the exhibition, Sklavenitis distills the
essence of this into nostalgic motifs commenting on wider ideas around
production, distribution and consumption. The painting entitled Yusurum
Party depicts bread sellers at a bustling market, the word ‘Yusurum’
describes a gathering of Greek immigrants who came to Greece after the First
World War in the 1920s; the work StudioKitchen is filled with the sound
of chatter and the tinkling of coins at the bakery; the deafening roar of
machinery as the wheat is gathered is captured by ByzanTan, where the
colour palette reflects the warmth and simplicity of expression. Bread is in
essence universalising, consumed as a staple food around the world, often with
spiritual, secular and ritualistic significance. It can be cheap and simple, or
be altered in a virtually infinite number of ways to suit any culture or
occasion. It is also one of the world’s oldest foods, having been consumed and
adapted over millennia from its humble beginnings more
than ten thousand years ago. Bread is therefore a shared experience, which has
taken on significance beyond nutrition, that eludes geographic or temporal
limits.
Sklavenitis
stimulates all five senses, providing a visual feast of colour and line,
combining the importance of taste and smell, as well as conveying a deep sense
of texture emphasised by the inclusion of sand and jesmonite in the wall
murals. He uses frescos, paintings on walls and canvas, to create a
Gesamtkunstwerk, a “total work of art”. The exhibition space, like the
paintings, has no specific focal point, drawing the eye in equal measure across
the breadth and depths of the paintings and walls. The flowing compositions and
striking colours create an immersive environment and are an important
continuation of his style of work to-date.
Biography
Kostas
Sklavenitis’ painting practice explores a range of media, materials and
surfaces. The artist explores scale through immersive wall murals, large
paintings and smaller works which perform like peeping holes into the
environments he paints. Often depicting scenes of everyday life, his
inspiration is drawn from his own personal experience of growing up in
Thessaloniki, Greece, and from working in a culturally diverse city like
London. He is interested in the subjects of tradition, religion, and culture,
from sources as diverse as folklore tales, gatherings at church or Sunday
markets and craftsmen’s workshops. These themes, through which the artist
explores cultural myths and narratives around life, love, death, and faith, are
communicated through colourful and vivid compositions in his paintings.
Kostas
Sklavenitis (. 1990, Thessaloniki) lives and works in London. Sklavenitis
graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 2019 and the Fine and
Applied Arts from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2015. Recent
exhibitions include Abracadabra, Assembly House, Leeds (2019); Something Else,
Kazan, Russian (2019); Something Else, Novgorod, Russia (2019); Something Else,
Triumph Gallery, Moscow (2019); WIP Show, RCA, London (2018); Magen Vibratoria
Bajo el Paraguas de su Reproducción, Museo Nahim Isaías,Guayaquil, Ecuador
(2017). The artist has the following scholarships : The Schilizzi foundation
Scholarship (2019); Maria Cassimati Foundation (2019); Neon Foundation
Scholarship (2018).
CAMDEN ARTS CENTRE Arkwright Road London NW3 6DG United Kingdom
Courtesy the artist
Photo by Luke Walker
Hollowed Water is an exhibition of new work in music, sculpture and video by Athanasios Argianas (b. 1976, Athens). Drawing on the social and historical specificity of acoustic forms and visual aesthetics, his works pivot between styles of different periods and genres; between natural materials and cultural meanings.
An artist and composer with a background in classical music, Argianas often works across disciplines, exploring how the procedures and protocols associated with one might be brought into play in another. During a residency at Camden Arts Centre in 2018-19, he developed recordings and new musical compositions, investigating the function of aural forms, shifting tonalities and structural models, including rounds, quartets and melodic repetitions. In Gallery 3, a new piece written for a string quartet is activated by the visitor, played from a turntable through a speaker and a custom adaption of the Metalique resonator, part of a prototypical instrument – the Ondes Martenot (Martenot’s Waves) – that tilts and bends sound, treating it as a tactile material. Another composition features as the soundtrack for a new film commission in the Reading Room.
The exhibition moves from the present to the ancient, through different scales of time and the perception of duration, uncovering traces of modernism in unexpected places. Two stylised heads cast in bronze from 1970s binaural microphones recall Brancusi’s modernist sculptures as well as prehistoric Cycladic figures. A set of modular ceramic sculptures, loosely resembling bodies, traces nuanced shifts from the curves of Art Nouveau to 1930s modernism. In contrast to these weighted bodies, a suspended parallelogram is draped with thin strips of brass that are etched with words describing absent objects – virtual and obscure.
The artist’s sculptures appear to occupy in-between states, where the natural and man-made, the animate and ornamental, the present and absent, are brought into dialogue. In this productive oscillation between materials and formats, ambiguous and synaesthetic states emerge, where open-ended emotional values may be felt.
Athanasios Argianas (born 1976) is a Greek /British artist living and working between London and Athens. Argianas was the second recipient of the Freelands Lomax Ceramics Fellowship at Camden Arts Centre in 2018-19. As part of the Fellowship, Wysing Arts Centre hosted Argianas for three weeks in March 2019 where he used the Wysing Polyphonic Recording Studio.
Supported by Freelands Foundation. With thanks to Tuplin Fine Art, London, and those who wish to remain anonymous.
Curated by Greta Scarpa 4.02.2021 / 18.04.2021 BITCORP for ART via Enrico Besana 11, Milano
Photos: Luca Matarazzo
BITCORP for ART presents Nicole Colombo’s (Monza 1991) first solo exhibition. Its title, SAM, introduces a fictional character – not well identified – created by the artist. Their body, void of gender traits and without a position in time and space, is deconstructed throughout the different areas of the exhibition, both through drawings and sculptural forms. The artworks on display have an in-your-face approach, that, at times, can even become aggressive and repulsive. It represents the initial relationship that the artist wants to create between the work and the viewer, underlined by a subtle violence, which reflects and refers to the omnipresent violence in our society. The drawings opening the show are the actual emotional introduction to a state of alertness. Those are parts, elements or fluids of SAM depicted by the artist. Some are veiled by an opaque surface, suggesting that the character is losing clarity of the character – as if SAM’s sight was slowly abandoning them. Some of the sculptures in the exhibition, like the cigarettes and the ashtray, are instead the manifestation of the rhythm and rituality that characterized SAM before their collapse, and are also guiding us to the main works: Agitating chunks of matter in uncertain space and A friend of mine once told me something about a phantom limb. Nicole Colombo’s approach to sculpture becomes in these two works; it begins by questioning volume, structure, and the beauty of functional details, focusing clearly on the sensual handling of materials. The concept of avatar, and the use and creation of fictional artwork-characters inside Nicole Colombo’s art-practice turns into a noble tool for the imagination. The body becomes a narrative surface, manipulated and brought to its extremes. The artist asks viewers to interact with the story she begun, giving room to personal memories and their interaction with the artworks’ identities, creating a continuous juxtaposition where details, experiences, feelings and gestures are the common platform onto which this story is written.
Nicole Colombo, born in Monza in 1991. Lives and works in Milan. Among the collective exhibitions in which she tooks part we mention: SUV curated by Pane Project at BSMNT (Leipzig, 2018); First I Have To Put My Face On curated by Christina Gigliotti at Like a Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare, 2018); Jollies, at Officina 500 curated by Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio (Torino, 2017); Paradise on Mars , at OJ Art Space (Istanbul) curated by Erdem Çetrez (2017); Kodomo No Hi, at Sonnenstube, Lugano (2017); Bubble Tea, curated by Pane Project, Milano (2016); Academy Awards 2015 , at Viafarini (Milano). Also participates in several publications including The oranges of the Sunrise, in collaboration with Alberta Romano curated by Media Naranja (Marseille); The EPC* where she creates illustrations for the text written by Alberta Romano and curated by Sink (London); Takecare #2 curated by Roberta Mansueto.
Views of LN2 VAPOR duo-show @ Gr_und, Berlin. Tunnel: steel, tarpaulin and luminescent spray (1500 x 400 x 250 cm), sleeping bag, basin, mist maker and immersible led, polyurethane foam sculptures and pipes, drip device and amplified pads, speakers, arduino programming, insulated tanks, neons, leds and UV lights, fan, air pump, water and powerade, QR inkjet prints.
The coming tech brotopia: a meet-up’s worth of uploaded consciousnesses embedded into the furl and ripple of everything that is, for all the forever there’ll be. Brin and Bezos long-boarding gravitational waves; Ma and Zuckerberg spit-balling over a blackhole; Premji and Page tweaking some water planet compounds to see who gets there first.
Fucking kill me, you might think. They probably will, to get there. If not outright annihilation they’ll leave whatever’s left of the rest of us to rot – or not rot, depending on how much of us by then is chip and titanium rather than flesh and gristle.
Step into the tomb-tunnel of LN2 VAPOR, a duo-show by Benoit Ménard and Théo Pozoga, and you tip into a version of this palo-alter reality. The sculptures that form the polyurethane vertebrae of the show are iceless cores corkscrewed out of future (ransacked cryogenic facility), present (survivalist’s techno-bunker) and past (Lascaux caves on ketamine). Every timeline riddled with vanity and hubris, the privilege of our magnificent nows. LN2 is liquid nitrogen, the extreme cold making it the perfect cryogenic fluid. What we call “cryogenics” is actually “cryopreserving”. The future is pickled.
Friends from highschool, LN2 VAPOR is Benoit and Théo’s first collaboration, they’ve been sculpting and plotting for months. But as I watch, now, 10 days before the show, they are still compositing and editing, animating and deleting. Sometimes they talk – thick French accents; sometimes nothing but hours of gestures, power tool murmuration. I’m writing about a show that’s not yet finished, a future that might not be how I write it. Can you see acetone dissolving polystyrene? If not here then another dimension gets to smell that. This idea of collaboration, of kinship, of banding together to make what can be made from this planetary massacre – that’s the hope pitted through this show. The suggestion that maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t have to go this way.
Stand inside a blackhole and you’ll see the back of your own head, light looping in on itself. The universe is not a ball but a donut: set off that way and you’ll end up right back where you started. Liquid, common in Benoit’s work, trickles through articulate piping, the guts of the sculptures, tapping out onto contact mics that create loops and reactions in Théo’s soundtrack. No footstep is let off the hook. We are shitting plastic into our children’s lungs.
Remember this as you reach the center of the tomb and know what it feels like to slip down into a sleeping bag. To zip it almost all the way up. Remember the patterns of a dying, starlit forest projecting through the walls of your tent. Remember everything you can before it’s time for us all to make the final decision: go under; or vaporize. (Martin Jackson, 2019)
Coach * indicates a four-wheeled vehicle with opposite-facing seats drawn by horses • from the German word kotsche, from the Hungarian word kocsi: ‘coming from the village of Kocs, south of Komárno’ When, in the 16th century, coaches began to travel between Vienna and Buda, the world became a little smaller. Initially, the coach had to be designed to cope with the rough terrain of the roads – the development of suspension and the improvement of the upholstery were driven by the need for adopting the sitting position over long journeys. Efforts to achieve comfort predetermined, but also accelerated, the development of this means of transport. The wider uptake of coaches correlated with a growing disruption to human biology. Overcoming distances without exerting any physical effort was accompanied by the so-called coach sickness, similar to the experience of travelling by boat. Paradoxically, the liberation from the tedious and mechanical process of walking put the body in an unpleasant situation. The source of nausea was the absurd combination of movement and physical passivity. The body had to gradually adapt to this radical transformation, just as the coach had to adapt to our needs. The nausea experienced by passengers was in direct contrast to the purpose of a coach – to care for the physical human body. The organism was enclosed in a sealed cabin and protected from the adversities of nature. From this perspective, the coach acted as a kind of precedent to the so-called human-oriented technology that creates, metaphorically speaking, a shell between us and the material world. By its form, it addresses our desires and at the same time responds to the interface of our sensory abilities. However, before the birth of modernity, the coach had also played another role – the development of transit, communication networks and infrastructure made it possible to settle in distant places. It was one of the first technological advances in which the Local gradually ceased to exist. In other words, the acceleration of movement gradually transformed our relationship with place and made it meaningless – a particular place can always be replaced by another one with minimal effort and without any physical work. Moreover, an equivalent and at the same time a consequence is captured by the increase in our interest in live streaming videos, which allow us to move from burning Australia to the comfort of an armchair. The coach in the 20th century finally lost its original purpose – it was replaced by an update, the train. Coach * denotes a slang term for a private tutor taking care of a student; instructor, technical advisor, head of a sports team (since the 20th century) • from the French word coche: ‘wagon, stagecoach’ The creation of the specific profession of coach in the 19th century corresponded to the needs of increasing knowledge associated with the gradual “de-enchantment” of the world [by secularisation], the spread of enlightenment throughout Europe and the necessity of a rapid transfer of information. The coach was a private teacher (initially working mainly at Oxford University), a person who looked after the comfort of the student, oversaw his or her learning process and specialization in a particular subject. He led the student to achieve a better outcome of his or her intellect, or more specifically, the coach accompanied the student and directed his or her attention. Figuratively speaking, he “transported” the concepts or ideas that were supposed to bring the student to a pre-determined goal. The profession of coach was based on caring the intellectual abilities. The body of the student, however, remained in a passive sitting position in a dark office. The movement—that the student performed—took place in the abstract realm of cognition, in which knowledge gradually compiled the notion of the world [an intellectual map of social reality]. After updating the Enlightenment version of the coach at the turn of the 20th and 21st century, his capitalist mutation focused on the business environment. The motto “Multiply your impact!” underpinned all the coach’s action which were aimed at increasing productivity and profit. The privileges and natural authority stemming from the position of a 19th century coach have been replaced by an artificially created reputation and a detailed profile on LinkedIn. Again, the coach was hidden in the private zone of a manager, a director or a team leader. He focused the client’s attention on his or her work agenda, short- and long-term goals, fostered the courage to change, and advocated prudence. While the Enlightenment coach focused on the student’s intellect, the newer coach focused on the client’s ego. The effectiveness of the coach was fulfilled in maintaining [stabilizing] the vitality of the ego by subliminal manipulation. His services have been set by the client’s individual requirements [“Designed for you!”] – flexibility was key to continued success in the changing world. In 2031, the coach of the globalized world was replaced by technology using artificial intelligence, which was able to analyse a wide spectrum of the client’s digital data for its absolute personalization.
Erik Vilím
I am Isaac, I´m a coach Isaac Supersoft, she calls me Wine and coffee, wine and coke Coke – water, coffee – chocolate Topping and bread, her sweat I´m slicky, sticky… sweaty together We were meant for each other In a way I love it too, soft surfaces I offer her Little bottom jumps into, seated she’s so cool seated position… changing her expression thinking… she’s thinking about guilt and comfort (come to sit) her gaze and motive (come to sit) blame and comfort – here together guilt and distance become greater “Haunted by that wall, I want the onyx for my own Aragonite day´n night, shiny orange light Orange faces, in that blaze… always in my mind The bedroom of Mathias, many red wine coloured walls Middle ages so creepy, the swelter´s making me so sleepy” Sitting… sitting… I am Isaac and I´m coach Isaac Supersoft they call me I´m horses lover, no emission I´m guilt powered, saw them jealous, They would love to be me! I am Isaac
Evi Kalogiropoulou is concerned with ancient feminist concepts and myths relevant to the female body. How were they perceived in the past and how are they represented in today’s society? Can new cultural identities arise from the emancipation of the female body in the context of technical developments? In her examination of post-feminist theories, the Greek artist not only questions patriarchal historiography, she also inscribes her view in a speculative and questioning continuation of the ancient myths. The exhibition Delirious Athens – the artist’s first solo exhibition in Germany – shows sculptural works in addition to a filmic work by Kalogiropoulou, examining the connections between mythology, patriarchal social structures and notions of femininity.
Artist Evi Kalogiropoulou (b. 1985 in Athens) lives and works in Athens and London. She studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and the Royal College of Art London. Her work has already been shown at the Benaki Museum, Athens, the Whitechapel Gallery, the Chisenhale Gallery and the British Film Institute, London.
Curator
Lotte Puschmann (b. 1981 in Hannover) is a freelance curator, art and culture manager. She organises art events in Europe, develops cultural concepts together with artists and galleries and advises collectors and companies. Puschmann lives in Vienna.
Mattia Pajè / One day all of this will be yours curated by Saverio Verini 28th Nov 2019 – 20th Mar 2020 Fondazione smART – polo per l’arte Piazza Crati 6/7 00199 Rome
Fondazione smART – polo per l’arte presents the new exhibition project One day all of this will be yours, the first solo show of works by the artist Mattia Pajè in Rome, curated by Saverio Verini. The exhibition is the result of a residency in the spaces of the Foundation, over a period of five months, and it confirms the support provided by smART to emerging artists in the Italian context, which, over the last two years, has led to the exhibitions of Valerio Nicolai, Carola Bonfili, Namsal Siedlecki and Ludovica Carbotta. During his residency Mattia Pajè had the opportunity to get in touch with the rooms and environments of smART, by literally inhabiting them, and during his continuing stay in these spaces he conceived an exhibition consisting of completely new works, in accordance with the artist’s tendency to develop projects that have a close relationship with the contexts in which he operates and interacts. One day all of this will be yours focuses on the concept of potentiality and on the situations that precede any point of arrival or goal. Pajè has made a series of interventions that are based on reflections on possibilities that have not yet been implemented and on the condition of waiting. Precarious and unresolved objects alternate with larger works, and materials and formal solutions that are often diametrically opposed give rise to an exhibition which can be read in many different ways. The artist uses various techniques such as sculpture, but with the materials left suspended in a state of incompletion; and painting, contaminated with photographic images. He makes ironic references to several pseudosciences, and he introduces the energy of animals – some of them real living animals, some of them only represented – into the exhibition space. One day all of this will be yours, is thus an exhibition that is swarming with heterogeneous “creatures”, which all share a condition of trepidation and excitement, but also of fragility and weakness, to which the title of the show alludes. This is an expression that has entered the popular imagination, expressing our expectations and a “promise of happiness” which, however, may or may not fulfilled in the end. In this suspended condition one can read the stimuli and the anxieties that accompany the artist’s pathway of development, but also those of the generation that Pajè belongs to, which now finds itself having to deal with the problem of building a career, with the instability of today’s sentiments and relationships, and with the doubts and hesitations that accompany self-affirmation and the realization of one’s creativity. Through his startling and unsettling images, Mattia Pajè evokes mixed feelings that alternate between trust and disillusionment and he seems to ask us questions such as: “Will we be able to achieve our goals?” and “What should these goals be anyway?”
Courtesy Fondazione smART-polo per l’arte and the artist, photo Francesco Basileo
What should we do with the title Roma 275? Every thought, every possible reference to the eternal city is muddled by the ostensibly random numbering, which can hardly be associated with Rome in any meaningful way. Roma 275 sounds like a designation within a family of products, a denotation as a mere unit of order, which stands in an arbitrary relationship to that which it supposedly denotes. This is interesting in several respects for Penno’s exhibition of the same name. When contemplating his new series of wall objects, their peculiar shapes immediately catch the eye. They are not – as they never are with Penno – shaped canvases. This quickly drawn terminology obscures more than it illuminates, for first of all, no canvas is used here; second, the works are hastily categorized as paintings, which they perhaps do not even strive to be; and third, and most important: since Stella, shaped canvases have transferred the assertion of an inner tension, an inner vitalism, to their outer edges in a kind of energetic model, whereas in Penno’s work it becomes a shoe. Obviously, the forms of these wall objects does not result from the surface, but rather seem to stand on their own, to come from a different context. They are probably cropped images of commercial goods, commodities, the dimensionality of which, already levelled by photography, becomes even more graphic, even flatter when reduced to the outer edges. The form as found footage now provides a surface that initially means a reduced spatial extension of an object that can no longer be reconstructed. In this respect, here, as in the product name Roma 275, an arbitrary relationship between form and surface is indicated which, in this case, however, instigates an activity that perhaps strives to fight against the unrelatedness of arbitrariness. For Penno acts out the traces of dimensionality, which play into the surface via the contours, within the surfaces, almost as if, contrary to Stella, he wanted to define the interior from the edges. Using coloured plaster, fibreglass mesh, paint-splattered linoleum or cardboard strips which serve as pallets, he builds up the surfaces, which are always reminiscent of painting supports, but consistently work against their own flatness. The permanent self-quotation of the painterly facets within his own practice – the remains of pallets, painterly markings in plaster or plays with moiré with the help of mesh – undermines any one-sided reading by suggesting that the passage from the surface into space is by all means reversible. Even more interesting, however, are the loops, which thus become visible in Penno’s works and working method: He does not exclude waste, by-products, and collateral processes, but rather feeds them back into production at later points in time. The completely splattered linoleum floor of the studio becomes a pictorial surface, while the cardboard pallets are subjected to a process of refinement. What was cut away during the creation of older works will later be returned to the exhibition space as a cast, which once again opens the theme of surface/space. In this ‘sculpturisation’ of former cut scraps of image carriers, however, it almost seems as if no frictional energy should be lost. Penno is not concerned with upcycling or sublimation per se, but always with a complicated preoccupation with indexicality beyond simple moments of derivation such as traces and imprints. In this respect, the technocratic title Roma 275 possibly stands for the problem of a disconnectedness that stands on its own, which is not based on a before and on which no after can be built.
– Moritz Scheper
Colin Penno, born 1980 in Mühlheim Ruhr, lives and works in Essen, Germany. He studied at Folkwang University of Arts, Essen and Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf (class of Martin Gostner & Georg Herold). Selected Exhibions: Museum “Dortmunder U”, Dortmund (group, 2019), Osnova, Moscow (duo, 2019), Kunstverein Heppenheim (solo, 2018), Independent Art Fair, Brussels (solo presentation with Berthold Pott, 2018), Berthold Pott, Cologne (solo, 2020, 2017, 2015, 2013), Hort Family Collection (group, 2016), Geukens de Vil, Antwerp (group, 2016), Sunday-s, Copenhagen (group, 2016), van Walsum, Rotterdam (group, 2016), The Cabin, Los Angeles (solo, 2015), Orangerie Schloß Rheda-Wiedenbrück (solo, 2014).
Courtesy of the artist and Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio
Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio presents “Coppiette”, solo show by Andrea Kvas.
The exhibition consists in 7 paintings realised by the artist in 2019. The works are characterised by a strong formal variety. This diversity originates from Kvas’ painting approach defining itself through the process. The viewer is then invited to analyse the pictorial composition with an active approach following the material traces of the unexpected occurred during its development.
In his practice, Kvas combines a gestural attitude with optical and kinetic influences: apparently regular grids and patterns merge with a vibrant use of color that invites theviewer to a dynamic fruition of the works.
Kvas defines his works as ‘constructions’ where the pictorial representation is not a simulation of reality but an attempt to reproduce its intrinsic dynamics:
“If, for example, I wanted to create an illuminated area – explains the artist – I would look for a material or a working method allowing me to create a reflective surface, being it as light as a neon light or as dark as the night“.
Christine König Galerie Schleifmühlgasse 1a 1040 Vienna
Photo: Philipp Friedrich
Images courtesy of Christine König Galerie, Vienna and the artists
Christine König Galerie – celebrating its 30th anniversary – presents works by four young artists (1, 2, 3, 4), curated by the young team* of the gallery. Each artist was invited under the premise to create and show a site-specific installation that reflects upon the gallery’s program, which since its foundation has been dealing with the central concerns of Christine König: politics and activism, feminism, literature, language, environmental concerns, and post-conceptual approaches. As the show is set out to be anything but a bleak retrospective, it will focus on present and future developments in order to not only advance the gallery’s artistic program, but to expand its international network and to build support for young artists.
1) Rebecca Ackroyd (born 1987 in Cheltenham, UK, lives and works in London)
Banal objects within dystopian or abandoned settings, dangerously silent: the works of Rebecca Ackroyd challenge the perception of space and its predefined codes. A roller shutter reading “Chrissie” on its box top, for example, engages in the artist’s study of the transition and extinction of maiden names throughout family histories, although at the same time symbolizing fears of vacancy, neglect and decline, especially looking at the systemic shifts caused by rising nationalism, Brexit or climate change, to name only a few. Fiery red shells lay before it, deserted and displaced, as if waiting to be either reanimated or to explode. In both series, titled Carrier and Hunter/Gatherer respectively, the more than life-sized sculptures confront issues of belonging, availability and exclusion. Rebecca Ackroyd’s paintings on the other hand evoke images that seem like snippets from colorful, dreamlike sequences, allowing us to glimpse at surreal moments, all of which may transport and create new and hopeful meanings within the bizarre landscapes they inhabit temporarily. It is this peculiar ambiguity and convincing speculation about our present and future combined with fierce aesthetics that align Rebecca Ackroyd’s works with the values of the gallery.
2) Louisa Clement (born 1987 in Bonn, lives and works in Bonn)
We are a little bit addicted to social media and adore scrolling through and staring at the weird, the fluid, sexy slick surfaces, and Louisa Clement’s works. Gliedermensch, a series depicting wooden articulated mannequin striking sometimes intimate, often abstract poses, may serve as an overall embodiment of her practice: the digital images, dark yet slick in appearance, speak of animation, automatization, and the relationship between the human and non-human. Forced into anatomically impossible positions, the subtle staging displays the uncanny madness of our century, demystifying ideals of beauty, the body, and sex in an aesthetic comparable to pre-body-positivity ad campaigns. Still, the artist’s protagonists do not point fingers as they are anonymous beings, serving as mirrors rather than representing specific narratives. The artificial quality within Louisa Clement’s works is even more prominent in the series Avatar. The fiberglass mannequins come in strong pastel hues and seem to develop into animated, moving characters in the video series Not Lost In You. In it, they interact in a hypnotizing yet slightly odd way – hence, it comes as no surprise that the power of seduction incorporated by our digital world is the artist’s ground for manipulation and critique of it.
3) Julian TURNER (born 1985 in Hamburg, lives and works in Vienna)
The third room of the gallery has a different energy than the other spaces. It has served as a “project space” for formats like Third Room or Im Zeichenraum, has hosted exhibitions curated by artists and curators alike, and is a passage to the “Queen’s den”, our actual storage and the library. Its main feature is the freestanding staircase at the gallery, designed by famous Austrian architect Luigi Blau, which Julian Turner overbuilt with an unusual replica of the oil refinery Schwechat, near Vienna. As is common in his practice, none of the above mentioned is really of importance to Julian Turner’s work – although it is exactly the point for understanding his artistic approach. The collages, models, material imitations and often repeated tropes like food, architecture and technics are appropriated from everything the artist finds interesting, planted into the spaces they inhabit and charged with new meaning via his typical signature, which may be described as amateurish in the best sense of the word. Not the perfect model, but the image of the model, executed sufficiently so it can be understood as such at once, is enough for Julian Turner. The well shaken mélange of cakes, bottles, cookbook pages, and a board from Austrian architect Hermann Czech’s Wunder-Bar – who, and here is one direct link, was a fellow student of Luigi Blau’s – therefore accumulates to a celebration amidst the imagery of ecological sin. Happy anniversary to us!
4) Honza ZAMOJSKI (born 1981, lives and works in Poznan)
What do Saint Denis, Bishop of Paris, dead composer Joseph Haydn and author and philosopher George Bataille have in common – other than being famous? They are connected through tales of decapitation and share this peculiar fact with Honza Zamojski’s two sculptures The Body and The Head. Originally conceived for last year’s exhibition Macbeth, Act I Scene 3, Act V Scene 7 at DREI in Cologne, the works circle around a short fictitious narrative of a production of Macbeth two unnamed individuals visit and discuss. The skepticism of one of them versus the appeasing replies of the other are two poles in the artist’s tale that constitute the tension between performers and audience, screenplay and interpretation, and body and head. The latter has a gold coin in his mouth, as if waiting for Charon, the ferryman of Hades, carrying its soul across Styx, the former has a few coins scattered over its open left hand while pointing to nowhere in particular with its right. Criticizing the violence and the lack of change after any forceful, political or societal act, the skeptical of the two voices in Honza Zamojski’s story may serve as our conscience, asking the unpleasant questions and facing our fears, not only of the beheaded, but of our bodily and mental constitution as humans – a digestible, somewhat humorous yet critical stance that we welcome in the artists we respect most.
*team
Robby Greif (Senior Director + Partner, since 2013)
Teresa Kamencek (Registrar + Archivist, since 2015)
Elsa König (Social Media, Press + Events, since 2018)
Andrea Kopranovic (Associate Director, since 2016)Robby Greif (Senior Director + Partner, since 2013)
Teresa Kamencek (Registrar + Archivist, since 2015)
Elsa König (Social Media, Press + Events, since 2018)
Andrea Kopranovic (Associate Director, since 2016)
NEVVEN is proud to present Withering Postures, the second solo show by Swedish artist Fanny Hellgren with the gallery, featuring a new body of wall based works in paper pulp and a steel mesh sculpture, furthering and enriching of new perspectives her material—based research and intimate artistic vocabulary.
The few, pondered works which compose Withering Postures, deal with depth and detachment with the subtle yet existential themes underlying Fanny Hellgren’s approach to art since the beginning of her career. Materials are exhibited naked, in their frailties and strengths, and allowed to speak to the viewers unmediated, in a soft and simultaneously determined way.
The concept of rediscovery and active reevaluation of poor materials and common objects characterising the Arte Povera movement, its detachment from Minimalist and Conceptual Art’s scientific methods for a more mythical and mysterious approach to art resonate with the Swedish artist’s practice. Yet, the presence of a personal and intimate level in Fanny Hellgren’s research detaches her works from the political preoccupations of the historical art movements on which her practice is rooted, making her art distinct, timely and cogent in our contemporary. Speaking through the marks left by her own body on the raw materials and allowing the materials’ agency in an organic and intuitive process, the delicate voice of her works approaches the viewer with an openness, non—intrusiveness and quiet soberness which is rare and precious nowadays.
Rusty and brutal metal versus delicate almost dissolving paper, the force and tension of the steel bent under the body weight of the artist clashing with the withering, creasing surface of the pulp and pigments. Fanny Hellgren’s art speaks through opposites and extreme juxtapositions, it describes tensions and delicatenesses, and while it allows the viewer to explore and interpret, guides her with a strong and mature vision. Withering Postures captures Fanny Hellgren’s practice at a crucial point, it fulfils the promises of her previous series while opening the way for exciting future developments. A state of transition that reflects the one captured in her works, a moment of stillness in between ever—changing states of existence.
Yusuke FUKUI (1972, Toyama) is a Japanese contemporary artist working in both fine
arts media (such as painting and installation) as well as commercial gourmet design. He is known for mixing traditional Japanesemethods and aesthetic
characteristics with Western painting attributes.
In his current exhibition at the 1111 Gallery, Everybody Needs Art is showing a
unique monotype series made in 2018.
Instagram: @fukuiyusuke @everybodyneedsart
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Everybody Needs
Art
Gery Georgieva / UWU Channel Radiance Curated by Julia Greenway 31st January – 14th February
Cubitt Artists 8 Angel Mews London N1 9HH
Curatorial Statement
Through research into Cubitt’s extensive archive of the organization’s 30-year history, an
algorithm was developed from past data sets. Using input materials such as exhibition press
releases and artist bios, the algorithm is capable of generating artist names, birth dates, and
educational backgrounds alongside exhibition titles and press statements leading up to the year
3000. In the culmination of this research, Gery Georgieva’s UWU Channel Radiance employs
the algorithm’s speculative look at Cubitt’s archive in determining her own uncertain future.
Requiring human analysis and deconstruction, like all data sets, Georgieva takes on a playful
yet cynical expression of the archive. Working within themes of popular culture, folklore, and
internet DIY aesthetics, Georgieva critically engages with popular and historical representations
of the feminine.
UWU Channel Radiance envelopes Cubitt’s gallery with vibrant curtains and carpet throughout.
Softening the gallery’s cold cement floor and stark white walls, Georgieva transforms her venue
into a commercialized feminine stage. In entering the exhibition through its curtained doorway,
the viewer is met with Full-Bodied Gentle Woman: a silk-stuffed pelvis hanging from bungee
cords. Green silk on one side and a collage of 90s female pop icons on the other, Full-Bodied
Gentle Woman exhibits Georgieva’s approach to the intersections of feminine iconography.
Across the gallery, the exhibition’s seven-screen video installation, Sybil’s Noon Shower of
Stones, verberates with a kaleidoscope of femme characters and silhouettes.
The central video,
commissioned exclusively for this exhibition, sees the artist as a contemporary news-reader.
Employing Cubitt’s algorithm as prompt, Georgieva delivers poetic news headlines eliciting an
uncertain and dystopic future. Set to a psychedelic and haunting soundtrack consuming the
gallery space, Georgieva embodies the inter-dimensional figure of the oracle and brings forward
a dark yet satirical series of prophecies.
– Julia Greenway
UWU Channel Radiance is part of the ongoing project Universal Work Unfinished which responds to
research conducted by curator Julia Greenway and ongoing conversations with artist Gery Georgieva.
The custom algorithm was developed in collaboration with Black Shuck, the UK based co-operative
producing digital projects.
This exhibition is generously supported by Arts Council England and presented in partnership with Cubitt
Artists and Goldsmiths University of London MFA Curating.
Exhibited Works
Sybil’s Noon Shower of Stones, 2020
HD videos (9:55) Script written in collaboration with Vanessa Onwuemezi Music by Naima Karlsson
Full-Bodied Gentle Woman, 2020 Silk, polyester, stuffing, bungee cords Made with Miglena Georgieva
Thank You
Many thanks to Cubitt staff and artists, particularly Lizzy Whirrity, Kadeem Oak and director
Amal Khalaf. Thank you to collaborators and supporters Back Lane West, Vanessa Onwuemezi,
Naima Karlsson, Dorothy Allen Pickard, Anna Paterson, Chris Kluster Smith, Ben Deakin, Scott
Travis, Louis-Jack, and Miglena Georgieva.
Thank you to Arebyte and the Exhibitions Hub at Goldsmiths College for generously loaning the
equipment for this exhibition.
Images courtesy the artist and Mikael Andersen gallery
Photos: Jan Søndergaard
In the Western world time has become a resource which is often scarce. Optimization and structuring of our fleeting time and relations, at work as well at home, is a fundamental condition in our modern society. And in a time where even our smallest virtual movements are monitored while global tech companies mine our most private conversations for data, our notions of intimacy have become increasingly digital.
Do feelings attached to the image of a loved one posted to Instagram vanish as it is reproduced in new and unfamiliar digital networks by strangers? Has the Internet taught us how to be intimate by making distance a common denominator we all find comfort in? Is life lived in the distance between our eyes and our screens? Has our ability to maintain a virtual (omni)presence while we live our lives changed the ecology of images by making them reusable?
Balancing Time Between Your Eyes shows a series of highly personal, intimate and emotional works that subtly exist in the blurred area between the analogue and the digital. In the tension field between sculpture and painting, Touborg creates evocative and sensuous works where painterly gestures, bright colours and specs of silvery reflections create a strong poetic presence, both tactile and coolly distanced.
In Balancing Time Between Your Eyes, Kristian Touborg’s alluring compositions; a careful mixture of figurative and abstracted extracts, set the scene for rhizomatic and interlinked, yet wholly autonomous works in which lively dialogues are established between repetition and variations in both colour and form. In these works, we encounter glimpses of memories and the feeling of time rushing through our minds while we are submerged in the blue light of our digital screens.
Although his paintings might appear to depict something ‘real’; for example, a familiar bedroom scene of two people equally lit up by the piercing blue light from a mac, as well as the evocative moon light, there are, in fact, no ‘originals’. Reproductions in various materials have been sewn together with canvas, leaving the viewer with a myriad of impressions.
Instead of merely drawing attention to the shift in how intimacy is constituted and monitored by technology, Touborg himself employs the technology and embeds these strategies within the works: thus, engaging in discussions concerning mimesis, repetition, simulacrum, and the role of the artist split between notions of the classical creator and the painter as a human graphics processing unit.
