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until 20.05. | #1361ARTatBerlin | Philipp Haverkampf Galerie shows from 22th April 2017 the exhibition “Rites de Passage” with works by the artist Anna Grath, Stephen Kent and Carl Mannov.
In the best cases, in earlier times pictures were miracles.
Today, we can drown in a continuous maelstrom of available pictures that over-exercise our attention to the point of unconsciousness. Don’t click “like,” just press the delete button, empty the content of your head into the trash. Isn’t the ability to forget a splendid invention of our brain?
Since the beginning of pictures the beholder encountered them as objects, but now they have to may way for the endless stream of digital images, which in their sheer mass and their subservient presence can be swiped away at any time, as they lack weight, and in a moment can be lost in the endless heaps of the data clouds
Anna Grath Kumulus Virga: the clouds are foating on the sky, the picture as a window onto the world is printed on a curtain. It draws a border and dissolves it at the same time. It is as if we were falling into a different dimension, and we may hope that the clouds don’t just carry data, but ideas for us. Meanwhile, the light box Squish stands on the foor in a portly fashion. This remnant from the analog world, unplugged, displays fbers of a carpet, and a spot, a lot of expansive pictorial information that blocks our way in a redundant and bulky manner. The light box, puzzlingly placed here, stripped of its original function, does not fulfll its purpose anymore, and is becoming a relic of a passing time.
Carl Mannov We are vessels. Like clouds, a torso and a seat cushion mate. The ribcage is expanded, every muscle properly defned, an über six-pack. The repetition of shapes is a like a journey through time, a formal loop to be taken with a grain of salt.
The head of the bearded man, next to the trashcan, the formal shadow play fnds succinct expression here. Gathering and forgetting, endless accumulation of information in the digital ether. Endless correlations suggesting broad knowledge, but actually in the end limiting our horizon.
Stephen Kent uses the pixel in its earliest form: the mosaic piece. The point materializes, is grounded, and interlaced with a trivial digital snapshot. Quotidian images from the memory of a phone—expendable moments—are contrasted with the laborious process of creating a mosaic.
Gestural painting, executed by Kent, solidifed in plaster and repeatedly reproduced, speaks of the banality of the pictorial content and the easy technical availability for producing images. Kent convolutes the roles of object and image, regardless of whether it is banal or sacred.
Vernissage: Friday, 21th April 2017, 6 to 9 p.m.
Exhibition period: Saturday, 22nd April to Saturday, 20th May 2017
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Image caption: “Kumulus Virga”, 2014 textiles, plastic 245 x 380 x 10 cm
Exhibitions Berlin Galleries: Rites de Passage – Group exhibition – Philipp Haverkampf Galerie | ART at Berlin
