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until 30.03. | #2369ARTatBerlin | galerie weisser elefant shows from 23rd February 2019 the group exhibition “Weltenwechsel. Oder: wesentlich gewesen”, a contribution to the realism of speculation with works by six artists, curated by Ralf Bartholomäus.
Participating artists: Codemanipulator, Kinga Dunikowska, Else (Twin) Gabriel, Astrid Köppe, Anne Rinn, Carsten Schneider
Within the sphere of influence of the philosophy of speculative realism, the problem of who is actually speaking for all of us, for the world, for the earth on which we stand, plays a major role. The more we become aware of our origins, the clearer it becomes that things look back at us and their questions: Where do you want to go and how could you forget us? – Is it an it that asks so, a logic without utilization? There are always enough opinions. And a speculatively intended art would be like the compensatorily calibrated fine balance of reason. Josef Vogl already comments on the meaning of realism understood in this way: “One could say that in philosophical terms this is an attempt to return to something like an intellectual gold standard. I would call these attempts alchemical experiments in the field of philosophy a little more pointed”. (1)
Of course, our selection of artists is purely speculative: What they have in common is that what is said in the work is its meaning itself, nothing beyond that, real and intentional, without staying with mediations. In her works, things speak “themselves”, words, sounds, gestures, plants and animals. Man is secondary, a transmitter whose exclusion guarantees authenticity, for a statement without interpretation or, as Deleuze says, “to go behind the mirror”, to transfer meaning into the work itself. (²).
(1) Im Sog der Zeit. Ein Gespräch zwischen Joseph Vogl und Philipp Ekardt über Spekulation. Texte zur Kunst. Heft 93/2014 „Spekulation“, S. 109.
(2) Gilles Deleuze. Logik des Sinns. Frankfurt a.M. 1993, S. 45.
Invitation of the exhibition Weltenwechsel, Graphic Design Carsten Nicolai
Codemanipulator
… is a phantom. One does not know who is behind this name, but it works in our presence, unrecognized – from an intangible background (like God). He also does not intervene directly personally, but his intentions or effects become visible, because he allows changes in only seemingly “eternal” processes or principles. For instance in the 10 Commandments that can be manipulated by the visitor in an exhibition (such as: “Thou shalt not abuse”). Or with a computer program in which people affected by their mad fate are virtually returned to life, incessantly. To believe in resurrection against all reason is not a bad idea.
Kinga Dunikowska
She always seems to play with her audience, in the best sense of the word, as a vanishing double, like a grin without a cat. How close are the mirrors, disguises and transformations, but also the construction of seemingly real worlds in which nothing is lost but our firm convictions. Everything else is gain, reward of amazement, even if we see through the deception: the joy of discovery is (re)-regained… The artist thus becomes a fairy, which she is also in real life, scurries by to lure us: Come closer, come closer, you find what you are. Nothing is discovered but this glow, like a flame without a candle, growth without ground.
Else (Twin) Gabriel
= the only legitimate representative of (dual) plastic planning, somnambule sense & form converter, cosmic gatekeeper of reason. The artist actually embodies more forms of production than can normally be accommodated in a biography. And there will be more! Only seemingly contradictory to this is the fact that she herself, “individually”, does not appear at all, but gives place to the epiphanies of the completely different, for better or for worse. – It is as if the sentence “I am another” had to be extended beyond recognition until it flows into the sentence “I am the others” (Durs Grünbein on Else Gabriel’s “State of Accelerated Silence”, catalogue Galerie Weißer Elefant 1991).
Astrid Köppe
Her motifs remain mysterious, even if you can watch her draw. They are, to call it an equally mysterious technical term: Polymorph disparate. The first word refers to the forms as manifold, but at the same time to their interpretations as manifold. In addition, they are unlike their models and incompatible with conventional terms. It is a fact that all pictures have a real cause or “source of ideas”, which, however, already in sketches and even more in the large-format enamels, leads to enigmatic entities that conceal their own ideas, consistently remain untitled, and that the artist is always heartily pleased about their naming/adoption by others.
Anne Rinn
… is basically interested in understanding. That is why their manual and verbal form of expression always changes in alignment with the interlocutor(s). These have already been extraterrestrial intelligences, the authors of difficult operating instructions or currently deaf people, whose communication the artist pursues and learns into subtle metonymic branches. Our exhibition shows the results of this collaboration, which operates with calculated transmission errors and even uses the loss of meaning to enhance the motif. The meaning is therefore not lost in the translation, but encoded in it (lost in distinction). The key is in the hypothalamus, inscribed: “mind the gap”.
Carsten Schneider
He now sees himself more as a modern hunter and collector than as an ordinary artist. He is more a juggler of letters than an author, an equilibrist, but less a statistician than a statistician of stammering and puffing. And he is interested in the breathing pauses, the moments of non-action. In his development as a musician, who he could also be, he came up with the idea of letting others act for him. It took three years and thus three generations of bird populations until the winged singers were determined enough to get involved with instruments, all classically stimulated with grains and sheaves. It should be understandable that there are also different stylistic inclinations among the little all-rounders.
Vernissage: Saturday, 23rd February 2019, 7:00 p.m.
Exhibition period: Saturday, 23rd February to Saturday, 30th March 2019
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Image caption: Graphic Design Carsten Nicolai
Exhibition Weltenwechsel. Oder: wesentlich gewesen. – galerie weisser elefant | ART at Berlin
