9th of June, Marco Goldenstein

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.

www.instagram.com/goldenstein_existenz, https//hochparterreberlin.blogspot.com and www.marcogoldenstein.de

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, Opening of 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

Organic Shapes

Pretty Pressure Dance and Egg Shaped

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 work is not yet done, but I established my atelier and a small gallery.

And of course I started working.

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: 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 Contamination

Ancestry

Sound Happening: Narval

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

Evgenija Wassilew: glass, vodka, alarm, resonance loudspeaker, 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’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.

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 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. 

Opening

Installation on the 1st floor of the medival hospital „Altes Spital“
built from discarded GDR wall units.

More information about Inken Reinert, her installative and graphic work you find here:

Inken Reinert

All photographies by Inken Reinert
Poster by Frank Benno Junghanns