Trésor, 11 photographies and 11 mirrors installed opposite in the corridor
Cabane, Que ma joie demeure de Jean Giono installed at Lake Geneva,Cully
ALEXINE CHANEL (FR) works with photography, video, performance, installation, collage, and sculpture. The media is typically dictated by the nature of each project. What links these different forms of expression is a vibrant interest for collecting, describing, categorising, and documenting various structures, emotions, systems, and memories. Chanel calls attention to everyday occurrences, apparently mundane facts and widely accepted traditions or structures, reorganising these according to new, experimental systems, thus permitting a new reading of them. The central theme of this body of work is the relationship between societal structures (spanning from religion, cultural traditions, to industry, administration, institutional matters) and the individual, its emotions and idiosyncrasies. It is the occasional discordances between these different types of organisms that interest Chanel.
(….) While the new paper cuts remain geometrically abstract and are sometimes dominated by strong stripes reminiscent of Pop Art, Schaefer’s earlier wall collages show finer and curvier lines as well as inclusions of writing or figurative elements. The associations that his works evoke therefore span a wide range from Sonja Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder, Bauhaus to Pop Art, Op Art and Comics. But every viewer of Schaefer’s works feels one thing: rhythm. Music. And no matter whether delicate or powerful, there is hardly a negative tone to be found. “Despite the lack of messages, my works reflect my inner music, the rhythm, the `be easy, be happy´ that I try to maintain in good times and bad.” (….) Excerpt of the text by Gallery Kurt-Kurt-Berlin. The full text and a documentation of the exhibition you find here: https://kurt-kurt.de/projekte/marco-p-schaefer-2020/
Paper cuts made from painted paper, each 20cm X 30cm
Paper cuts made from painted paper, each 40cm X 60cm
All Photographies Inkjet on Hahnemühle 40 cm X 40 cm
„Unobserved photography on public transport has a long tradition, from Walker Evans to Tom Wood; but Petrov Ahner’s digitally created series is […] coherent in itself and opens up a new dimension in the broad field of street photography, which seems to combine even the conceptual and the instinctive.
Formally, the focus is initially on indifferent reflections and reflections on the glass surfaces, and on shadowy, de-individualized figures on the other side. In the picture of this situation, the fogged up or graffiti- or tag-scratched panes of the suburban trains cause seemingly superficial injuries to the faces and bodies behind them, when they can be seen more closely, so much so that everything within the picture merges. The window pane is usually a transparent separating layer, a protection between inside and outside, but here it is often opaque due to extensive soiling, condensation or ice-flower-like freezing over and is therefore more comparable to a semi-transparent curtain […].
Some photographs are abstract, others remain realistic and yet puzzling because of the multiple layers of reality and images that overlap. Petrov Ahner visually freezes the everyday moments before the doors of trains open and the previously so shadowy is personalized for a moment, but can still hardly be grasped. He is interested in the fleeting and accidental encounters of unknown people, which in this form only a photographer or writer with a special eye can capture so excellently […].”
Extract of the text on Koinzidenzen (coincidences) by Dr. Matthias Harder, curator Helmut Newton Foundation
Petrov Ahner, born in 1965, worked from 1994, after his assistantship in Munich and Miami,15 years as a fashion and portrait photographer in Paris. With the documentary „Out of the dark“ about illegal immigrants in Paris, he distanced himself from the fashion world and in 2009 moved to Berlin, where he devoted himself entirely to the production of artistic photo series. The series „Coincidences“, shown in excerpts in the exhibition, has been published as a limited edition book by Edition Carpentier.
Das ist die Wahrheit (This is the Truth) 140 of 500 pieces
Marco Goldenstein works on serial drawing projects over long periods of time. Wall-filling graphic installations are created. The drawings of the installation „This is the truth“ were created over 2 years while working in a call center. Hence there is a connection to the classic telephone drawings, fleeting scribbles lost in thought that could appear on a notepad during a business call. Drawn with blue ball pen and based on the form of the bubble, they together create an overwhelming variety of patterns and signs.
Also part of the exhibition are selected works from the serial „Lockdown“ which all in all comprises 120 pieces.
The designs here can be thought of as an imaginary spiritual refuge that has to be abandoned and reconstructed again and again. Manifestations of time created in a late-capitalist open-plan office, variations of self-localization removed from temporality, patterns, rituals, models, vanishing points, communication, …… There ist still space between the lines.
Marco Goldenstein, born 1968 in Oldenburg, is a painter and draughtsman. He was co-operator and curator of the project space „Hochparterre Berlin StudioSalon“ in Berlin Kreuzberg from 2015-2020.
The happiness of a soap bubble is short and glorious. Anyone who breathes life into it and sees a part of himself, freed from all heaviness, float away, hardly more than a round glimmer, but breath of his own breath, must feel a little bit like a god.
Marco Goldenstein’s graphic variations under the title „Das ist die Wahrheit“ initially seem like a late reminiscence of this moment of happiness. In their crowdedness and multiplicity, his bubbles and spheres, circles and rings, which are continuously set in motion anew and condensed into fabrics, foams, streams or meshes, could seem like the result of a childlike, naïve creative joy and playfulness. The fact that this impression soon gives way to a growing uneasiness may be due to the fact that the truth, which according to the title is to be represented here, is composed of a large number of parts that differ widely in form and structure. In contrast to the sphere, which formally dominates the drawings, the A4 formats are arranged without distance in a wide band to form a grid.
This truth, whatever is hidden behind it, looks at the viewer as if from a cell with a hundred eyes. Nothing rounds out here; only through the structural violence of the arrangement do the drawings remain connected. One finds oneself surrounded by it and overwhelmed by beauty and apprehension in an almost sublime way, if one experiences sublimity according to Burke like a „delightful horror“.
It is all the more astonishing that this perception owes itself to the nervously meticulous drawing of a plain biros and hardly art-suspicious everyday utensils from a late capitalist open-plan office: it is probably no coincidence that the majority of the pictures were created in the call centre of an polling institute where Goldenstein earned his living. Excerpt from a text by Emanuel Maess
From the series „Lockdown“ pastel on paper 40 X 40 cm
The artist in conversation
5th of May, Openingof the Art Space
with my works: Organic Shapes, Egg Shaped, Ancestry and Pretty Pressure Dance
Being busy providing Malaysian Satay with peanut sauce and drinks to our visitors, we missed taking pictures during the opening. So an exhibition view is what you get.
For more pictures and information about the works please scroll down to previous posts.
Ancestry 50 pieces, various sizes
From the series Organs and Machines 25 X 18 cm and 20 X 15 cm
2 years ago I left Berlin and moved to Cully, a small village at Lac Leman, between Lausanne and Montreux. I renovated a small, very old house in the centre of the village.
The Houseto the laketo the vineyards
The work is not yet done, but I established my atelier and a small gallery.
Entrygallery space gallery in the atelierworking in the atelier
And of course I started working.
organic shape 7
ANCESTRY AT AU TOPSI POHL
The last exhibition in Berlin before Covid and moving to Switzerland took place in the wonderful Jazz-club Au Topsi Pohl. Unfortunately the club now is closed: The „Au Topsi” spirit left its body and floats around as potential, now and again visible like snow through a lamppost in a park in Denmark a century ago. Many thanks to the team for great concerts and nights and the support for the exhibition.
The work Ancestry comprises 50 collages on early 20th century photographies in contemporary frames. It is actually conceptualized as a 3 m x 5 m wall installation
ancestry at au topsiancestry at au topsiancestry at au topsidetail
ANCESTRY: THE BOOK
During Covid we transformed Ancestry into a book. Besides the images of the 50 collages, the book contains an introduction written by myself and a synergy text by D. Holland-Moritz. Both texts in german and english. It was designed and partially made by hand by Alexine Chanel. Photographies by Petrov Ahner. There is an edition of 50 numbered copies. Thanks to Frank Benno Junghanns for the help.
Zwitschermaschine, Berlin October 2019 Sound Happening: Narval (Evgenija Wassilew & Peter Strickmann)
Please scroll down for CVs and the text „About working with flowers“ from my catalog
Organic Shapes
Organic Shapes 5, 6, and 3
Egg shaped 3 (pink egg)
Organic Contamination
Ancestry
Sound Happening: Narval
Peter StrickmannEvgenija Wassilew
Photographies by: Petrov Ahner, Frank Benno Junghanns and the artist
The Duo Narval draws on sounds of possible languages. The minimal and sculptural sound happenings emphasize contrasts, sparseness and timbre and meet in improvisations between chance and control.
Peter Strickmann: Objects, Feedback, Wind, Ceramics, Smartphone
Peter Strickmann
installs, performs and manipulates audible activity in public and private
environments, observing, confronting and questioning the habits of hearing in
both routine and extraordinary contexts. He realizes installations, essayistic
projects/field trips, as well as situational sound actions and concerts in
various groups, duos and solo.
Evgenija Wassilew’s work
comprises installations and objects, performative sound recordings as well as
sound and text based records. In doing so, the respective recording,
translating and compositional methods touch limits and possibilities of
communication, in which different worlds of perception encounter.
About working with flowers
The flowers used provide a wide range of color, reaching from white to deep purple. These colors change with the process of drying and pressing, whereby the blossoms of one plant, depending on the moment of „harvesting“ and the state of wilting undergo different changes. The results of this process are not exactly predictable. The pressed blossoms are not homogenous; each blossom is intricately different from the next, with varying shapes, color patterns, and veining creating diversity among the material.
Another important feature of the organic material is their transparency. Working with the color and intensity of the pigment in the process of overlaying the flowers, the levels of transparency create a necessity to find balance among the varying blossoms.
The individual pieces in the body of work “Organic Shapes“ are constituted of 200 – 300 blossoms, although 400 – 500 blossoms are pressed to realize each work. A limited, heterogeneous (s.a.) stock is available, embedded in constellations of ongoing change. Through the inspection of the available material and the definition of the shape, diverse combinations can be formed from gradients of color and transparency.
From this point on, the work evolves through the interaction of the artist with the blossoms.
The trajectory of making is substituted by a process of mediated growth that is induced by the singular qualities of each blossom. The work grows with and from the material.
The process of growth, thought to be in contrast to the process of making, is the starting point in the material and realization of the artistic process united in one.
Tim Ingold describes this way of production in an encompassing reflection of worldcreation as follows:
“The maker´s ambitions, in this understanding, are altogether more humble than those implied with the hylomorphic model. Far from standing aloof, imposing his designs on a world that is ready and waiting to receive them, the most he can do is to intervene in the worldly processes that are already going on, and which give rise to the forms of the living world that we see all around us – in plants and animals, in waves of water, snow and sand, in rocks and clouds – adding his own impetus to the forces and energies in play.“
The aesthetic direction of these pieces, which is briefly described here, has developed since 2016. It was realized with “Usambara (Hybrids)“ and “Organic Contamination“. With the most recent works, “Organic Shapes“ it has fully unfolded.
The pieces of the Organic Shape / egg-shaped series integrate aspects of similitude and mimikry into the morphogenetic process.
inter-port, Berlin November 2018 Jelena Bolevich, Vanessa Farfán, Jörg Hasheider
The exhibition shows three
artistic positions that place a special emphasis on the processes that are
fundamental to and continually inscribe themselves in the creation of the
works. This continuous inscription takes place in an interaction between the
artist and the material/medium. This interaction presupposes a special
attention to the qualities inherent in the material, the medium.
Jelena Bolevich · am/pm (Detail)
Jelena Bolevich’s medium is primarily drawing. She performs laborious and manually repetitive processes of mark-making, whose constant deviations and mutations bring focus to the physical body moving through time. The pictorial process is both the form and content of the works, as they accumulate into a story of their own formation, while providing a record of the artist’s lived time. Her work thus considers the human as an organism engaged in constant processes of mark making, as it interacts with materials that surround it.
Vanessa Farfán · 5052 (Detail)
The creation process of
Vanessa Farfan’s works of art is determined by artistic experiments. She finds
her source material during extensive expeditions through urban structures. The
subjective impressions gained are combined with knowledge of the analogous and
virtual processes of our everyday lives. Mistakes, accidents and undetermined
factors and their aesthetic potential belong to the artistic process.
Using paper and graphite as the main materials,
Farfan creates structures that she subjects to processing by folding,
embossing, and overpainting, the results of which she then partially
superimposes and sets to music in a further step. In the resulting image objects, subjective and
objective aspects, aesthetic and accidental interventions are linked to
analogies of our living spaces, the conditions of our existence.
Jörg Hasheider Organic Shape 3
Jörg Hasheider works with
pressed flowers. The non-homogenized material, the uniqueness of each flower in
color, form and transparency requires a correspondence between artist and
material. The process of making is replaced by a process of moderated growth.
The work grows out of and with the material. The process of growth, thought as
opposed to the process of making, is at the same time the starting point in the
material and the realization of the artistic program.
Organic Contamination 40 sheets of tracing paper, 20 floral blotches
Berlin based artist Jörg Hasheider has been working with pressed flowers for many years. After he explored their symbolic values in collages and material paintings, he recently switched his focus towards the immanent qualities of the flowers — shape, colour, transparency —. For “Baustelle eins”, Hasheider created “Organic Contamination”, a wall piece constituted of 64 A4 sheets of tracing paper and 20 floral blotches. In this work he explores the tension between conceptual shaping and organic growth. To achieve this, he scrutinizes two aspects of the process of contamination. Initially, the concept to contaminate a geometric, standardised raster with floral blotches directs our attention to the differences between industrial and organic shapes and patterns.
On another level one can witness
the process of the “making” of the blotches from grown organic matter — always
unique flowers. This takes place in a modulating process of ongoing mutual
influence between the artist and the flowers: The “maker” is contaminated by
his material. This interaction alters the classical understanding of “making” —
shape dominates material — towards a “making“ that intertwines shape and
material in a common flow of energy.
Baustelle eins (Building Site
one), whose name refers to ongoing, uncompleted processes, integrates the organic
contamination in its concept. The tracing paper sheets merge with the wall and
the floral blotches interact with the surrounding glass, stone and metal.
