NEVERTHELESS asks how it is possible – in our age dominated by media and advertising, ‘unspiritual’ in the main, and widely characterised by superficiality – that the spiritual reveals itself nevertheless in the form of radical philosophy (with a renewed, clear reference to Hegel) and in art, i.e. in a psychically inspired creative force.
The exhibition presents seven international artists representing this trend, artists who demonstrate the courage to instigate the “spiritual in art” (Wassily Kandinsky) with a conspicuous purism. All of them trust, more or less, to an inner principle and the interaction of mind and hand when using the medium of drawing. Their works suggest a change in the zeitgeist, making it rather anti-materialist and expressive of doubt in the fun society, yet without propagandist simplification. The aim of this tendency is not imitation of the outside world, or a documenting approach, but a search for the autonomy of refined emotions, as manifest in shimmering lines and an intro-
spective tone.
NEVERTHELESS is being realised with generous support from the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Senate Offices – Cultural Affairs.

NEVERTHELESS
With works by: Tomislav Ceranic, Motoko Dobashi, Katja Eckert, Olaf Holzapfel, Sebastian Hammwöhner, John Kleckner, Roland Stratmann
11th July – 3rd August 2008, Studio 1
Opening: Thursday, 10th July 2008, 7 pm

MARKUS DEGERMAN’s works are experiments with architecture and elements of design. His interventions reprocess public, urban or institutional space. To create the installation “No matter how hard you work...”, Degerman reconstructed architectonic elements from various settings and set them within the exhibition space as sculptural objects: an accessible, u-shaped metal grid structure like the ones used for wheelchair ramps encircles the pillars in the centre of the room; a sculpture in the form of a round-arch doorway, made of MDF, laminated chipboard and roughcast, picks out a popular design element of the past, now associated primarily with the 'grotto' style of some Italian restaurants. Separated from this context, it again seems like a cool design object. Further components of the exhibition are window elements made of wood like those representative of stylish living in old buildings: in the meantime, plastic mock-ups to stick onto the windows of new buildings are available and therefore also make them poor taste for some people.
Markus Degerman uses such examples of style to point out that architecture and design, as aesthetic discourse, always interrelate with current political and social discourse, and experience the same permanent change for that reason. “No matter how hard you work...” intends to sound out the potential for differing approaches to concepts like ‘quality’ or ‘value’ within the framework of specific aesthetic and political contexts.
Markus Degerman holds a fellowship from the International Artists Studio Program in Sweden (IASPIS), Stockholm.

Markus Degerman
“No matter how hard you work to bring things up, there’s someone out there working just as hard, to bring them down”
11th – 27th July 2008, Studio 3
Opening: Thursday, 10th July 2008, 7 pm

ZAUM MATERIAL II is a 10-channel video/sound installation by ULRICH POLSTER (video) and CHRISTINE SCHERRER (sound), which is divided into 3 x 3 visual spaces and one projection. The individual visual spaces are oriented on the classical format of the triptych, which is realised digitally in this context. The work is a choreography of found components and fragments concerning the indefinable quality of memory; in formal terms, it is close to the art form of opera. In interplay with sound, the video sequences provide reflections of the ambivalence of human feelings and the moment when they waver, even turning into their opposite and revealing emotional abysses. The visual beauty is broken by the acoustic level; the apparently unleashed images are ‘restrained’, and it becomes possible to experience the sound almost physically.
Because of the way that Polster and Scherrer stage emotional isolation and a search for community and participation in society despite the decline of social institutions, ZAUM MATERIAL II is a highly conflicting aesthetic experience, but it also highlights the beauty of memory.
The exhibition ZAUM MATERIAL II is being realised with generous support from the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Senate Offices – Cultural Affairs.

ZAUM MATERIAL II
Ulrich Polster / Christine Scherrer
11th – 27th July 2008, Studio 2
Opening: Thursday, 10th July 2008, 7 pm