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until 23.10. | #2800ARTatBerlin | Luisa Catucci Gallery presents from 5th September 2020 the solo show “Theater of Soliloquy” with drawings, video and installation by the artist Maike Freess.
“There’s always a hole where something isn’t.”
– Kurt Tucholsky
On the phylogenetic level, humans function by drawing their motivation from elements that are positive for them. Negative, bad memories are pushed away, while positive events, memories and stories are added. This helps above all to live and survive better.
This mechanism of our human existence, to push away the negative for the benefit of the positive is a well established fact. Valuations of things and experiences of the past, are historically adjusted, repaired and manipulated.
Eliminating or manipulating history proves to be a more obvious way to evaluate things and experiences in an advantageous way for the here and now. However, this results in a proportionally wrong picture.
DIE ERBEN 47, 2020, graphite, coloured pencil, 30 x 25 cm
The conditions we experience at the moment of an event have an impact on our selves, unfolding in completely different lights in retrospective. So it seems that the chance of objective reflection is hardly possible.
To consciously correct, change or modify the view of what has been experienced, even to repair, creates a context that is totally intertwined with the described mechanism.
With these premises it seems obvious that every memory is already a correction of reality. This generates the desire to correct our memory in such a way that a better approximation to reality becomes possible.
Dealing with the intellectual heritage also plays an important role in this context: it becomes impossible to avoid the moment of confrontation and acceptance of the heritage, growing influenced by it, or to avoid the dynamics one will automatically unroll while following its imprint socially and genetically. Heritage can become a burden, a burden or even a gift.
So is there absolute individual freedom? Of course not. At best an approximation. A certain determination is given to each individual.
DIE ERBEN 56, 2020. Graphite, crayon,
copper, paper cut-out on paper, 30 x 25 cm
“I consider Theater of Soliloquy to be a culminating ensemble, a final hybrid. Drawings, mostly on black paper, show body shells, fragments of human beings.
I’m not interested in real images at all, but exclusively in the “Beyond”, in order to show our inner life with all its peculiarities, attitudes, imperfections, aberrations in everyday life, inadequacies even of social norms.
I’m concerned with human existence from a psychological perspective. I am seeking to depict a kind of psychological space, with the ‘imaginary space’ as my basis.
I want to expose our very personal dramas, our inner theater. The loaded inner worlds and ambiguities, the indescribable, the invisible, become visible.I operate with the connection of the “inside” and the “outside” both on a material and psychological level. Psychological spaces are pushed to the outside and become tangible, uncanny “inner” spaces. I am looking for a connection between the “inside” and the “outside” as well as for a place of transition, where the mental and physical spaces correlate and create a new reality. I am interested in an existential principle.
I am interested in moments of not-now, psychological blanks and empty spaces, waiting for something new, actual, special.
The unconscious takes its own place here. All means of distortion, exaggeration into the surreal or mutation are fine with me. Oddity is always the thing breaking the routine in our gaze.In my drawings I use black or white cut elements. Cuts, cracks, gaps, wounds and injuries in the paper are also created. They give a glance into the soul freely, as well as superimpose, separate or move their subjects.
They stand as the second double layer, which is permanently present, in parallel to our existing thoughts and cannot be named.
These “hidden places” describe the uncertain, the indescribable, the gaps between real things. I transfer these black or white cuts, cracks, fissures or slit also into the real space as three-dimensional drawings.– Spatial drawings / architectural interventions (cuts):
I don’t cut the cuts, cuts cut the space.
Similar to the drawings, black lines, peaks and edges cross even walls and floors. They rise from an unpredictable source, to vanish into thin air. The organism “space” should be put into an artificial deep sleep.
Precise interventions should disrupt, reconstruct and refigure the “circulation”. These ‘cuts’ – cuts, tears, wounds, violations, deconstructions, superimpositions, fades, laminations – stand for the void, the unknown, the unforeseeable, the unknowable that constantly crosses us in life. Like black holes or blind spots they mark what we cannot understand with logic. These gaps and holes between things are ultimately more significant than the visual presence in a specific location, because they constantly reactivate the perception.”Maike Freess
DIE ERBEN 53, 2020. graphite, coloured pencil, copper, paper cut-out on paper, 30 x 25 cm
The exhibition Theater of Soliloquy shows drawings, video and installation by Maike Fress. All the media she uses interact with the space surrounding her and invite the viewer to come closer, to dive into the ocean of emotions and be reborn. Her works speak about humanity as human beings. Those who feel, rejoice, torture or suffer, and it is this quality that makes us all alive, sensitive to the smallest changes, that makes us human.
Their poetic language is clear and direct. Maike Freess describes the human being as an unstable emotional being, she talks about identity boundaries, unconscious fears, contradictions and its metaphorical meaning.
Every work of art could be seen as a space with a narrative. Nothing happens, but it is full of action, psychological self-examination and study. As Maike Freess says, everyone is “trapped in themselves in the Beckett sense”.
Vernissage: Friday, 4th September 2020, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Exhibition period: Saturday, 5th September to Friday, 23rd October 2020
To the Gallery
Exhibition Maike Freess – Luisa Catucci Gallery | Zeitgenössische Kunst Berlin Contemporary Art Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
