During our interview to prepare this text, Than tried to retrace the conception of an exhibition that had been postponed many times. His project, interrupted by personal or collective tragedies, has had different versions, some of which have been put aside as his explorations have progressed, or else put off for later. Borne up by an inhabited, chaotic stream of words, he waltzes me along the traces of more-or-less well-known characters from the first half of the 20th century: Pierre-Lucien Martin, a Parisian maker of art books during World War II (he is supposed to have had in his possession the first manuscript of Genet’s The Maids), Philip R. Perkins, an American painter who frequented the gay New-York demi-monde of the 1940s and was a friend of the founders of the magazine View (Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler), or else Charles de Beistegui, the ostentatious Franco-Mexican heir, decorator and art collector, who was behind the scandalous Bal du siècle of 1951 at the Palazzo Labia in Venice, which he owned. Then came the A-listers : Marcel Duchamp, Greta Garbo, Marcel Broodthaers or else Joseph Beuys. Lost in the complexity of a layered conversation, I suddenly realised that I’d been absorbed into a demonstration of “queer gossip”: that historic-speculative practice that brings in rumours or gossip to make good the gaps in history and its uncertainties. As a confirmed collector of memorabilia and minority narratives, Than Hussein Clark explores the historic density of queer lives in the 20th century: he seeks out traces and digs up personal stories, wondering how some individual trajectories may, or may not, have coincided.
For Despair, he has taken an interest in the filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his 1978 film of the same name, adapted from Vladimir Nabokov’s novel. In it, Dirk Bogarde plays the owner of a chocolate factory, Hermann Hermann, who organises his disappearance after meeting his doppelgänger. And yet, what runs through this exhibition is the withdrawal from public life of Greta Garbo, the Swedish-American star of the silent screen. In one of the six cabinets presented by the artist, a checkerboard is occupied by a variation on Joseph Beuys’s famous declaration: “the silence of Duchamp is overrated”*. Taken from a 1964 action that criticised the artist’s decision to abandon art and devote himself to writing and chess, it has here been adapted to the silence of Greta Garbo, to which no one would attach the same intellectual importance. It is a point of departure so as to think about questions of disappearance, absence, and a productive negativity.
The exhibition is inhabited by photo montages that provide Greta Garbo and Dirk Bogarde with a space to meet each other, on the basis of Polaroids stolen from the Rothschild Bank in London and objects consecrated by Duchamp. We also encounter photographs of the body of the artist’s father, dressed up as Captain Hook, made shortly after his passing. The character of Peter Pan, haunted by a crocodile and a clock, here can be seen as a figure of human finitude. Each of the cabinets presented by the artist is marked by the influence of the architect and interior designer Emilio Terry, and contains a ready-made : a boat made from metronomes, an architectural model of Broodthaers’s famous white room, an original drawing by Philip R. Perkins, or else a painting that belonged to the artist’s father.
In line with a conceptual art to which he had previously paid little attention (too straight), Than Hussein Clark considers the question of a queer ready-made that would be more attentive to its provenance than its function as an object. We might wonder about the gossiping power of objects that convey queer stories: how do they allow us to trace out lineages, or produce embodiments of lives that have preceded us ? In his book “Between You and Me” (2005), the historian Gavin Butt looks at gossip as a queer relational methodology: an action that maintains the process of heritage in an artistic community while deconsecrating the archive as a fixed and stable historical material. In this exhibition, a concern about producing connections while maintaining the irrational power of artworks is central: hence the artist’s love for the irreverence and anachronism of collages. There can also be seen his interest in affective design, haunted by the spectre of functionalism. Behind the doors of the cabinets, skeleton-maids seem to dance or twitch, and the memory of Jean Genet is never far away.
* “Das Schweigen von Marcel Duchamp wird überbewertet.”
Text by Thomas Conchou
Translated by Ian Monk
https://daily-lazy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1-1-scaled.jpgWeatherproof is excited to present Techno Primitivism, an exhibition of works from Rachel Jackson.
Rachel Jackson (b. Harrisburg, PA) is an artist, designer, and publisher based in Long Beach and Los Angeles, California. Her practice involves the use of digital imaging, time-based media, and additive/subtractive technologies to create works that reflect evolving relationships within networked society. Examining how the simulated image situates itself within natural perception, Jackson often looks to the false artifact as a manifestation of this phenomena, using it as a tool to express the anachronisms and dubious authenticity present within collective memory. She is interested in the speculative power of images and objects, particularly in their potential to alter a canonically held interpretation of history.
In collaboration with Brandon Bandy, she publishes artist books through Special Effects and organizes exhibitions at Timeshare.
https://daily-lazy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1-copy-scaled.jpgIn the decade in which I was born, the majority of Americans decided that “greed was good.” Since then, nearly every time the United States has experienced some major moment when it could have reflected on this stance — the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, the 9/11 attacks, the 2008 recession and the subsequent Occupy Wall Street movement, Citizens United, the list goes on — the U.S. government has continued to uphold this belief, and the sentiment among the nation’s population only seems to be growing stronger. We recently decided to re-elect a fascist oligarch instead of electing a globalist cop. Either way, we were damned. But now, it’s mostly a question of how — how much, for how long, etc.
This exhibition isn’t about the United States. It’s not about politics. It’s not about capitalism. At least not directly. It’s more so just about what it can so often feel like to live in a country whose government is controlled by and whose culture is consumed by capitalism.
⁃ Keith J. Varadi, December 2024
https://daily-lazy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Thedamned12212-copy-2.jpgExhibition projects by artist and curator Diogo Pinto, who studied Fine Arts in the master’s program at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW from 2019 to 2021, are case studies that enable him as an artist to pursue questions that art criticism and art studies usually leave unanswered or do not even ask in the first place. These are questions about the real production conditions of art, which are decisive for the identity of an artwork. Diogo Pinto is a meticulously researching artist who is interested in micro-historical phenomena and the associated forms of artistic expression, which he takes up in his own painting and develops in exhibitions. His project for der TANK deals with the interplay between business and culture in Basel during the heyday of the chemical industry in the second half of the 20th century, in particular the resulting impulses for design and art as well as the effects on local artists and their position in urban society. In addition to new works by Diogo Pinto, which can be understood as a group of works like a cartographic representation of the mental and public space of Basel, the exhibition at der TANK also includes a series of six advertising brochures designed by Gérard Ifert, a student of the graphic artist Armin Hofmann, for the chemical company J. R. Geigy in 1952, as well as the painting Nachtfalter (1944–1945) by Peter Birkhäuser.
The exhibition by Diogo Pinto is the fourteenth project of a series of exhibitions initiated in 2017 that presents commissions of former students and lecturers of the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW.
Maurice Joss hat eine ganz eigene Sprache entwickelt. Seine grossformatigen Bilder mit abstrakter Malerei sind eine Suche nach Form, nach Gestus und Dynamik. In der Ausstellung „goofy“ zeigt er neue Arbeiten. Auf den ersten Blick mit klaren Formen konfrontiert, weichen diese immer mehr einer Unsicherheit in der Akkommodation, dem Vermögen des Auges, zu fokussieren. Einem Vexierbild ähnlich, ist plötzlich nicht mehr klar, was hier im Vordergrund steht. Flüchtige Orte, Zwischenräume, die sich den Blicken entziehen und in denen sich das Wesentliche verbirgt. Was umgibt hier was?
Feine Linien erheben sich nur, um im nächsten Moment durch einen Pinselstrich gebrochen zu werden. Starke Schatten lassen vermeintliche Umrisse hervortreten, nur um sich selbst wieder von ihnen vereinnahmen zu lassen. In Joss’ Duktus zeigen sich energische Bewegungen und es entzieht sich den Betrachter*Innen, was hier als Addition verstanden wird und mit welchen Pinselstrichen eine Negation des vorherigen als bewusster Akt im Bild verweilt. Farbe wird hier aufgetragen und dort abgeschabt, Linien unterbrochen, Flächen zerteilt. Es ist diese Ambiguität, welche die Malerei von Maurice Joss auszeichnet. Er zoomt in die Zwischenräume und es sind die Grenzen, die verwischen.
Projection revolves potential titular meanings. A Kodak Carousel tray as a vitrine titled Archive (Anthology (Diary), 2024), 2024, showcases 80 slides—a reproduction of the slide show Anthology (Diary), 2024, which was stolen during its first showing. Index (Anthology (Diary), 2024), 2024 is an overview of Tim Dlugos’ New York Diary, digitally marked in blue and overlapped with screenshots of diaristic entries on X before transferred onto dia-positives. A photograph captures Max reading Dlugos’ poem You Are There.
https://daily-lazy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Projections-1-scaled.jpgThe soft tissue between the ribs and the navel, hypo (under)—khondros (sternum), is the name for the place from which it often physically springs, and from which the term hypochondria is derived. The endless curiosity and study of one’s own body, despite more or less dubious motivations, does nothing to diminish the seriousness and power of this obsessively attentive questioning. We may therefore ask—an this mode of observation be transferred to other bodies or even beyond the species? And could this extended state of empathy be useful if we could reframe it appropriately?
Šimon Chovan has been speculating on these questions for a long time, and the body of work presented at his first solo exhibition in the Czech Republic is no exception. A close look at the seemingly minimalist form of the site-specific project Dendrites & Tissues reveals a detailed work with both form and context. Chovan often casts, dissects, dissolves and stages his objects into complex, organized wholes that evoke structures and systems of various types: human, natural or artificial.
The drawings carved into wood, which serve as the gallery’s paneling, thus relate to this dislocation of boundaries. Is this a written code from the anxiously cork-padded bedroom of Anne de Noailles or Marcel Proust, or rather a bark typographically gouged out by a bark beetle, disrupting the entrenched security of the interior? But the branching of the mother corridor into intricate patterns can also resemble mine shafts, neural dendrites, lupine scabs, technological hardware or the growth of mould on damp walls.
The appearance of the objects is evocative and haptic, which is facilitated by conscious work with the exhibition space. This is played out by the artist in Galerie mladých, when he expands the ornamentation of Mannerist plasterwork from the drawings into the baroque-cellular morphology of the dendrites. The mixture of materials such as silicone, porous loofah, branches and ochre pigment confirms the material sensibility that characterises Chovan’s work, especially with regard to the latter.
Ochre, an ahistorical dye containing iron oxide, is an important element in his work—the volcanic region of Banská Štiavnica, where the artist comes from, is rich in it. The question of what is original (“natural”) and what is constructed is answered by the dialogue between the “living” pieces emerging from the gallery walls and ceiling and the piece that is isolated in the vitrine, where it appears as a mere remnant. Here, it only resists metal dust.
The exhibition project, in the words of the French philosopher Catherine Malabou, encourages us to think about the interrelation of material and conceptual, biological and cultural, human and non-human forms—not only in their specificity, but also in their interconnectedness. Dendrites & Tissues therefore suggests not so much an autoimmune attack against one’s own tissues and organs, but rather a liberation from original functions and givens.
The arrival
A tall figure appears in the doorway. Three hours late. As it is already four o‘clock in the morning, the figure falls asleep in the bathroom until it is gently carried to bed.
The dance floor
The Art Nouveau building was constructed on the demolished remains of the old royal court because the king thought the location was a little too hyped. The black and white photographs were taken on dance floors after the suppression of the Prague Spring and before the end of the communist regime. This phase – characterised by repression, censorship, controls and purges – was euphemistically referred to as normalization. Dance schools were an essential part of this period. One would usually dance in borrowed garments, it was mainly the floor that cringed at the sight of grandmother‘s bulky shoes. One metre seventy-five above, pairs of eyes crossed each other regardless of the dilemma going on beneath their shuffling steps. (Knowing the right connections, the black market would also offer a limited selection of Western goods. Few knew a tailor who was able to copy the cut of a real dress from Paris). But now: The circle doesn‘t even try to close itslef, it keeps flowing out like the yolk of a ruined fried egg. And the garments from Paris are getting cold just as quickly.
The Man (Trophy Man)
Mannequins are human-shaped plastic shells with empty hands presenting empty promises. Normative displays avoiding a multitude of nasty accusations. White paint has been applied in multiple layers to conceal almost any identity – but his abs is just too hard (and reveals his approximate year of manufacture 1980s). Fashion responds to general uncertainty with a false sense of security. It attempts to commodify nostalgia and emotionally fuel ready- to-use aesthetics. The man is now at a point where he randomly offers free hugs.
The wedge
Someone staggers through the room in a half-asleep state and has forgotten what time it is. 1500: Theatre was usually performed on raked stages to create the illusion of perspective. Not only for the audience, but also for the dancers, who often became dizzy and unexpectedly fell. To be honest, it was mainly these moments that triggered wild applause and roaring laughter (RATATATATATATATA: An oversized wedge is sawn to shape by hand and now sticks out into the door frame -> tripping hazard). A shadow runs across the stage, I follow but backstage I lose track of it. And now? I neatly sweep up the dirt that has accumulated over a long period of time and dump everything overboard. I watch the ever-shrinking pile drifting away (glancing after it with a pseudo-sentimental expression).
The departure
On my next visit, I stand in the doorway by myself. I cross the room at an unrhythmic pace. I am alone in four rooms (it‘s so boring).
Text by Divided Studios
Show text by Babette Robinson:
Taken from the introductory line of code “Hello World”, this inaugural exhibition at Possibly Sometime Tomorrow introduces eight artists whose works reveal the contradiction of making art in an increasingly absurd and disorienting world.
In uncertain times, artists often respond with bold declarations. Yet, when overt statements fail to resonate, some turn to the absurd. By focusing on the small, the silly, and the nonsensical, they find a way to persist. This approach is deeply rooted in Paris’s historical role as a crucible of the absurd.
Every artist eventually grapples with the idea that the world lacks inherent meaning. Each work in this exhibition reflects a universe filled with contradictions where the simplest acts of creation become gestures against existential despair. From a flattened car to crumpled suits, termite-infested circus tents, a house made of pencils and earthenware pots made from clay collected in the artist’s garden, an ancient attempt to begin society anew, akin to the rebirth symbolized by the phrase “hello world”.
These “mundane” objects exist alongside photos of fireworks like flashes of light or shooting stars – a celebratory war-like spectacle. Two depictions of nuclear bombs are infantilized by being described as “mushroom clouds”. Seemingly trivial, everyday art objects are set within the endless threat of self-destruction.
PST is a home for these peculiar responses to our current “material conditions”. It is no coincidence that a great explosion of absurdity in Paris followed World War II. Today, both the city and the world face a new kind of meaninglessness, with circumstances that feel impossible to resolve. PST provides a space for the quiet joy of creation amidst discomfort, where the small is expanded and the large is reduced.
“You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on” – Beckett, The Unnamable,1953
POSSIBLY SOMETIME TOMORROW:
Possibly Sometime Tomorrow is a new artist-run space committed to engaging with artists and audiences in ways that move beyond the confines of traditional art structures. PST will be a dynamic space activated through exhibitions, events, and immersive projects, with an emphasis on genuine collaboration, process-oriented support, and an exploratory approach to programming and participation.
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