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until 19.03. | #3309ARTatBerlin | Semjon Contemporary presents since 21st January 2022 the exhibition benthos borborygmi by the artist Michael Kutschbach.
After being postponed twice due to the pandemic, the latest work by the artist, who has been living back in Adelaide/Australia for years, is presented in his exhibition “benthos boborygmi” at semjon contemporary gallery. “benthos borborygmi” are fantasy words meaning life at the bottom of the sea and the sound of stomach growling. This expresses (again) his appreciation of Lewis Carroll.
In 2021, Michael Kutschbach had been commissioned by the Guildhouse in Adelaide to create a multi-channel video project for their Collection Project. The subject: the collaboration and engagement with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra as a differentiated body of sound and organism. The premiere of the three-channel video took place in Adelaide in public space, among other things on house-high video screens.
Due to the pandemic, there was no direct contact with the orchestra. The artist’s observations were made digitally, from live film recordings of concerts to orchestra rehearsals to communication with individual orchestra members.
The pictorial realisation speaks a biomorphic abstract language. At the same time, it reflects the artist’s interest in siphonophores. These are state jellyfish, which as an organism are composed of individual organisms, lead a symbiotic life and are correspondingly multiform. Like the dissonant ‘tuning in’ before the actual concert, the warming up of all the instruments by the musicians, a cacophony arises that expresses itself in the individual images of the three monitors, but abruptly becomes a harmony/trichord when concordances arise intentionally or by chance.
Analogous to the multi-channel video, which is presented in the gallery rooms as a three-channel video but can be expanded to a 15-channel video, another group of works is presented, which, as small-format wall objects, again take up the aspect of the multifaceted in form and material. They are made of hard tin, glass and coloured acrylic fibres.
funambulist (p30), 2021, ca. 10 x 6 x 2,8 cm, Hartzinn, Glas und Acryl
As with the siphonophores, their multifariousness generates completely new visual and materialised ‘images’ that have never been seen before, which, when viewed more closely, generate a harmony of their own and could be understood as wall decorations.
The soft and moving printed silk ‘flowing’ from the ceiling into the exhibition space complements the exhibition to form a triad: it is the moving image as a triptych, it is the small sculptural wall structures and the photographic, digitally altered image that conquers the gallery space in its materialised lightness.
pinguid, 2022, 364 x 272 cm, Digitalprint auf Seide
Once again, Michael Kutschbach presents his artistic work, his claim to material divergence and his artistic skill across all media and composes this into a temporary Gesamtkunstwerk, just as he has done for the past ten years at Semjon Contemporary. It is no coincidence that the gallery opened in 2010 with his solo exhibition “hoi polloi”.
Source text: Semjon H.N. Semjon, translation: ART@Berlin
Exhibition dates: Friday, 21 January – Saturday, 5 March 2022*
Special opening hours from 15 February to 19 March 2022: Tue – Sat, 1 – 3 and 5 – 7 pm
On Thursday, 17 February, the gallery closes at 3 pm.
* The gallery might be closed between January 25 and February 12. More details on the gallery homepage. The exhibition can be seen through the gallery window daily from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The 3 channel video fuliguline can be seen perfectly.
To the gallery
Exhibition Michael Kutschbach – Semjon Contemporary | Zeitgenössische Kunst – Contemporary Art – Exhibitions Berlin Galleries – ART at Berlin
