Germaine Koh stages her art as a form of apparently
casual, yet calculated theatre. In her hands, everyday places and
objects, familiar situations and actions are trans-
formed into astonishingly salient scenarios, and the audience must
make sense of these. They are obliged to work out for themselves
how the objects and actions confronting them came to be where they
are, and what conceivable intention lies behind them. The absurd
demands an answer. In Koh’s work, passers-by are tempted to
speculate.
It is no wonder, therefore, that the artist has developed into a
specialist for public space, who often even relates gallery works
to the world outside or uses them to focus on the transition into
public space. Her exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien brings
this process to a head, presenting a piece of outdoor space in the
middle of the enclosed studio.
Germaine Koh has placed a section of urban wasteland found in the
city of Berlin into the studio. The clumps of ground, laid out to
fill the room as if they were a huge carpet, are grown over by grass
and weeds and populated with the usual tiny creatures. The artist
will be watering, cultivating and caring for this transferred biotope
during the exhibition, meaning that her art can grow and flourish
beneath the visitors’ feet.
This metaphor of slow growth may have an ironic appeal in an artists’
residence, but Koh leaves it entirely up to the public to make points
and draw conclusions. Gradually, visitors discover that they are
walking on a section of the “death strip” beside the
Wall - which was once close by - and that grass has now grown, quite
literally, over this chapter of history. But above all, they watch
a vegetative change that takes place quite naturally, completely
disregarding art and its viewers, who will nonetheless see the usual
gaps and empty spaces in the city with different eyes in future.
Studio 3, 16th September thru 2nd October 2005,
Wednesdey - Sunday, 2pm - 7pm, Opening: Thursday, 15th September
2005, 7pm |
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The exhibition "The Helsinki
School – A New Approach" - a cooperative project
between the Künstlerhaus Bethanien GmbH and the TaiK: University
of Art and
Design Helsinki - is a touring exhibition due to travel all over
Europe. It intends to show a wider international audience the
working methods of 22 artists trained in the field of contemporary
photography at the Helsinki School.
On the basis of the diversity and formal range of these works,
the presentation aims to illustrate the atmosphere of freedom
and the open and cooperative teaching methods at the acclaimed
and influential academy.
thehelsinkischool.com
Studio 1, 16th September thru 23rd October 2005, Wednesdey - Sunday,
2pm - 7pm, Opening: Thursday, 15th September 2005, 7pm
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Punk was a bizarre chapter in the
history of the GDR. Punk has seldom consisted of such posing and
dandyism and a simultaneous bitter, do-or-die confrontation –
chiefly provoked by the disoriented, yet merciless organs of state.
Punk in the GDR was a weird mix of verbally acrobatic Expressionism
and the unconditional wish for fashionable opposition. Punk was
a friendly and radical, oppositional family within a fussily patronising
society, the security forces of which were obsessed by a desire
to brutally explode and destroy this chaotic-aesthetic experiment.
Exhibition space: Salon Ost
Saarbrücker Str. 20, 10405 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg
(U-Bahnhof Senefelder Platz)
Exhibition: 27th Aug. thru 25th Sept. 2005
opening hours: Wed– Sat 3pm –
8 pm / Thu 3pm– 10pm
>> Programme
Finissage: 25th Sept. 2005, 6pm
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In Scandinavian cinema there has been
a long tradition of paying attention to little things and to the
everyday world; personal concerns, wishes and longings are clarified
against this background. In her artistic work, Lisa Strömbeck
often adopts such practice, playing with well-known everyday phenomena
in her video and performance works.
With a sly wink and a certain sense of comedy and irony, therefore,
she reflects on our exaggerated affection for animals or the manifestations
of female role clichés.
In the 28-minute video she made in Berlin, "Es war ja nicht
alles schlecht" (Not all of it was bad), Strömbeck examined
a specific historical problem affecting the place she is currently
living; Germany. She documents the personal stories of eight former
GDR citizens, with whom she spoke at length about their life in
the GDR and the period after the Wende. Entirely different evaluations
of the political and private changes experienced by the protagonists
emerged; changes triggered by the dramatic process of transforming
a socialist social structure into capitalism and all its inherent
implications.
Disillusionment and hope thus occupy equal places in this work,
which contains no spoken commentary by the artist, but leaves any
statements to the people interviewed.
Studio 2, 16th September thru 2nd October 2005,
Wednesdey - Sunday, 2pm - 7pm, Opening: Thursday, 15th September
2005, 7pm |
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