Ornamental, July 2016, Berlin

Video filmed at the opening,

29th of July, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin

Silvia Beck, Laurence Egloff, Marco Goldenstein, Elke Graalfs, Anett Lau, Peter Nansen Scherfig, Veronika Schumacher, Wolf von Waldow, Dana Widawski

The ornament is back, back as wallpapers in fancy lofts, as filigree blinds in architecture and also back in the discourse of contemporary art. In the current art-production, two relations are particularly obvious: 1. Working with ornaments in their baroque function as space structuring elements relating architecture and art/design. 2.The deconstruction of ornamental structures that are looked upon as symbolic for opressive systems. In-between these formal and contentual, associative reference points – and beyond – there are almost endless possibilities to access „The Ornament“ and its long history. For thousands of years, ornaments were defining the appearence and the spiritual message of buildings and objects of everyday and ritual use. They integrated the progress of philosophical, religious and geometrical-mathematical thinking into more and more complex structures and gave them visual presence. The formal means of rhythmics and recursion – used since the Stone Age – establish a connection of being human – pulse, birth, death – and cosmic processes. In the 20th century, the concept of structuring surfaces and intertwining them with ordinal systems finds a new surface in the observation of corporative production and organisation.The ornament is less regarded as communicating stability and knowledge, but as a form incorporating force and power. Nowadays the ordinal system „Ornament“, formally and motivicly fractionalized, becomes the stage for the clash of systemic and individualistic thinking. Adopting the transcending concept of the ornament, while simultaneously transforming it subjectively, contemporary artists reestablish the ornament as an unconcerned, descretionary media. A media that makes it possible to connect images and tokens in new ways and structure walls and spaces. Silvia Beck, Veronika Schumacher, Wolf von Waldow Dana Widawski, Elke Graalfs, Marco Goldenstein Peter Nansen Scherfig, Dana Widawski