The exhibition Spatial Momentum comprises works by the artists Bretz/Holliger, Marta Dyachenko, Bastian
Gehbauer, Thomas Putze and Shirin Sabahi. All works relate to spatial
environments in a broader sense. They are considered as impulses to reflect on
the transformation of interiors and public spaces.

Bretz/Holliger

Bretz/Holliger use their performative sculpture Selfportrait Upside Down (2010/2022) to engage drastically with the art space. A casted double
portrait of the two artists is attached to a steel cable and a drill. Slow
rotary movements of the screwdriver destroy the space and at the same time the
cast of Bernhard Bretz and Matthias Holliger’s faces. Space and sculpture are
destructively related, producing marks on the walls and on the work itself. The
materials of which the work consists of are taken from various places in Berlin
that exist in a transitory state.

In contrary the work Displacement
transducer (2022) – a 1:20 scale
model of one of the exhibition spaces at HAUNT – is of a more subtle nature.
The model was transported via bicycle from the artist’s studio in
Berlin-Kreuzberg to the exhibition space in Berlin-Tiergarten. The eruptions
and vibrations during the ride were documented by a marble covered with ink.
The traces of the transportation were re-painted in the exhibition space 20
times larger, creating an enlarged wall painting of the smaller model. The
randomness of the movement contradicts the consciously executed painting,
whereas the movement functions as a kind of code for the topographical context
of the urban space.

Shirin Sabahi

Repurposing and recycling are strategies that
Shirin Sabahi employs regularly in her practice. With the change of context, a
different meaning is ultimately created. The Window
Session, an in-situ installation (since 2016) repeats
and consequently codifies a new and geometrical pattern. The pattern is
reminiscent of buildings in crisis—abandoned, in earthquake zones, or during
war bombings—where to minimize the casualties caused by flying glass, windows
would be secured by tape. The appearance of the generally discontinued pattern
suggests the vulnerability of the physical as well as the ideological space of
the exhibition.

The works Untitled
(Banister), 2022 and Untitled (Elevator Pieces), 2022 consist of construction debris of a residential roof extension in
Berlin (Dachgeschossneubau), where Shirin Sabahi used to live. She collected
items that have a connection to the building growing in height— such as the end
of the banister being sawed off to extend the staircase from the fifth floor to
the new sixth floor, the elevator cabin as the entire elevator tunnel needed to
be extended and the attic door that formerly opened towards the elevator room
and rooftop.

Bastian Gehbauer

Why do spaces change? In the photographic series Phantasma (2022) Bastian Gehbauer
continues to deal with spatial transformations. His current investigation on
the discrepancy between a historical and a contemporary purpose of a building
started at the so called Baukunstarchiv of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin.
While researching Bastian Gehbauer found vintage negatives of buildings by the
Jewish modernist architect Harry Rosenthal, who mainly build houses for artists
and private villas in Berlin. His estate contains negatives of a studio house
of writer Arnold Zweig. Rosenthal had completed this house in 1931 and had the
construction process photographically documented. After the expropriation by
the Nazi general Kaupisch in 1938 and the emigration of both Zweig and
Rosenthal, the building was altered to such an extent that nothing of its
original aesthetic is recognizable anymore. Kaupisch wanted to eradicate the
original architecture and adapt it to the so called “New German Aesthetic”.
Since the original studio house itself can no longer be physically entered, it
is now the photographic documentation and its artistic interpretation by
Bastian Gehbauer that provides an entry into the past worlds, like a phantasm
that remains intangible and in the vague.

In the former washroom of HAUNT, Bastian Gehbauer
shows his second work Gartenbauamtabteilung
(2022) in the form of photographs that question
the relationship between image and space. The work itself was created before
the exhibition was set up in HAUNT. They show fragments of all the rooms and
corridors including the washroom – condensing the entire building into a single
space. It is a „mis en abym“, a picture within a picture and at the same time a
room within a room installation.

Marta
Dyachenko

Where Shirin
Sabahi‘s work expands towards the inside and the outside of the exhibition
space by using transparency and references past fatal happenings (like Bastian
Gehbauer), the newly produced work schiffbar
ent.mach(t)ung  (2022) by Marta Dyachenko deals with the
present. With schiffbar ent.mach(t)ung, she develops a kind of ideological
counterpart to her already existing sculptural series schiffbar machung by
taking up the current consequences of the war-related sanctions imposed by
Russia. Since the beginning of the war against Ukraine, the yachts of Russian
oligarchs – the economic powers behind Vladimir Putin – have been detained,
including that of Alisher Usmanov: „Shrouded, the oligarch Usmanov‘s ship lies
in harbour of Hamburg. Put simply, the yacht in its current shrouded form turns
into a sculpture in public space, almost like a work by Christo and
Jeanne-Claude. The geometric shape reminds me of architectural models by
Kasimir Malewitsch. This „disempowerment“ suits the yacht much better; its form
is now taking on references to the tradition of free and democratic thinking
that Malewitsch is representing.“

Thomas
Putze

Thomas
Putzes and Bretz/Holliger‘s collaborative work Predecessor  (Vorgänger) (2022) consists of 4 white walls using the entire space of a room,
representing an impenetrable spatial division. During a performance, the walls
are penetrated by the performer‘s actions. Starting with delicate touches his
actions culminate in a brutal treatment of the walls. As a „predecessor“ he is
paving new paths in the space for the visitors, but also leaving behind
devastation.

Text by
Juliet Kothe

frontviews
at HAUNT | Kluckstraße 23 A, 10785 Berlin

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COURTESY

Bretz/Holliger,
Marta Dyachenko Bastian Gehbauer & Akademie der Künste,

Thomas Putze ,
Shirin Sabahi