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For Berlin Art Week
Opening: 13 September 2016 @ 7pm
Exhibition: 14 – 22 September 2016 @ 3 – 8pm
Curated by Constanze Kleiner & Isabel Bernheimer
@ Ballhaus Secret Garden, Gartenstrasse 6, Berlin
Featuring Artists from the MOMENTUM Collection:
Janet Laurence, Sarah Lüdemann, Fiona Pardington
&
Andreas Blank, Jan Cuck, Via Lewandowsky, Viet Bang Pham, Hella Santarossa, Daniele Sigalot,
Alexandra Vogt, Gabriela Volanti, Johannes Vetter
Exhibition initiated by BC – Bernheimer Contemporary in cooperation with Constanze Kleiner, MOMENTUM, and Moritzgruppe
 |
The world’s broadest question.
(Or why we find ourselves at a parting of the ways).
In English, the word “Why?” is homonymic with the letter Y, a beautiful character that can also be read as a sort of parting of ways, a fork in the road.
The question “why?” asks about cause, asks about the causative conditions of realities in the past. In response to a why question, one can immediately pose the next why question – as children do – until the chain of causality leading to the observed event is comprehensible, or one simply chooses to stop asking.
A gap always remains, however, in the answer to a why question, since the goal and purpose of a causal relationship – whether past or present – remain open and hidden. Why? is therefore a question about causes. Thus the word “why” is supplemented with the question “to what purpose?” – with a question about the future, with a question about “where to?” In art, this vision of the future may flash in an anticipatory way alongside the question of cause. In addition to “why?” art inquires “what for?” and, with it, “where is it heading”?
[Text by Constanze Kleiner]
MOMENTUM Collection Artists Featured in Y – WHY:
CORAL COLLAPSE
from Reef Resuscitation Project, Homeopathy [10 works in total] (2015).
Kodak metallic C type photographic paper, processed in RA-4 chemistry. 126 x 86cm.
Originally created for Artists 4 Paris Climate 2015 and FIAC 2015.
Janet Laurence is a leading Australian artist whose multidisciplinary practice is a direct response to contemporary ecological catastrophes. Laurence creates metaphoric propositions based on scientific knowledge and her own first-hand experience of threatened environments. She sees her role as an artist not as one of didacticism or activism, but as an interpreter of the natural world and the devastation it is facing in the Anthropocene – our current epoch of human-induced environmental change. Exploring notions of art, science, imagination, memory, and loss, Janet Laurence’s practice examines our physical, cultural and conflicting relationship to the natural world through both site specific, gallery and museum works. Experimenting with and working in varying mediums, Laurence continues to create immersive environments that navigate the interconnections between all living forms. Her practice has sustained organic qualities and a sense of transience, occupying the liminal zones, or places where art, science, imagination and memory converge.
Janet Laurence lives and works in Sydney. She has been a recipient of both a Rockefeller and Churchill Fellowship an Australia Council Fellowship and the Alumni Award for Arts,University of UNSW. Laurence was a Trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW, a former Board Member of the VAB Board of the Australia Council and is currently a Visiting Fellow at COFA NSW University. Laurence exhibits nationally and internationally and has been represented in major curated and survey exhibitions worldwide. Her work is included in many museum, university, and corporate collections as well as within architectural and landscape public places.
HOKEY POKEY PENNY LICK (2014).
Life-size Video Installation. 31.09 min, looped.
Snakes smell with their tongues and receive information they use to hunt their prey.
Humans taste with their tongues and engage in sexual activity.
Hokus Pokus.
Hokey pokey, slang for ice cream sold by street vendors, or “hokey-pokey” men. Penny lick, the accompanying small glass for serving the ice cream for one penny. Licked clean by the customer and returned for reuse.
Sarah Lüdemann grew up on a farm amongst an eclectic selection of animals and surrounded by the planes of the Northern German country side. She studied Linguistics, Psychology and Fine Art at Cologne University from 2001 until 2005, lived in Norway, Italy, England and Holland to learn four languages and was selected for an influential residency at Fundación Marcelino Botín, Villa Iris with Mona Hatoum in 2010. Later that year she received the South Square Trust Award to study an MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, which she completed with distinction in 2011. Her work has been exhibited widely and internationally, including at Printed Matter, New York / Goethe Institute Cairo, Egypt / Collegium Hungaricum, Berlin / MOMENTUM, Berlin / Hayaka Arti, Istanbul, Turkey / Trafo, Szczecin, Poland / LYON Biennale de la Danse, La lavoir public, Lyon, France / Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden, Germany / HDLU, Zagreb, Croatia / October Salon, Belgrade, Serbia.
www.fionapardington.blogspot.rs
YOUNG HAWK, HAG STONE AND PAPER NAUGHTILUS, RIPIRO BEACH (2014).
Photo printed on canvas with substrate. 150 x 100cm. From the EX VIVO Series.
Pardington’s practice often draws upon personal history, recollections and mourning to breath new life into traditional and forgotten objects. Her work with still life formats in museum collections, which focuses on relics as diverse as taonga (Māori ancestral treasures), hei tiki (greenstone pendants) and the now-extinct buia bird, calls into question our contemporary relationship with a materialized past as well as the ineffable photographic image. Likewise, her series of still-lives using found objects, family relics, and detritus from New Zealand’s beaches, commingles art historical transitions with the questions facing our culture and our planet today.
Dr Fiona Pardington was born in Auckland. She is of Maori (Ngāi Tahu, Kati Mamoe and Ngāti Kahungunu) and Scottish (Clan Cameron of Erracht) descent. She holds a Doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of Auckland. Fiona has worked as a lecturer, tutor, assessor and moderator on many photography, design and fine arts programmes at New Zealand universities and polytechnics.
Fiona was named a Knight (Chevalier) in the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres) in 2016. Other distinguished fellowships, residencies, awards and grants include the Moet & Chandon Fellow (France) in 1991-92, the Frances Hodgkins Fellow in both 1996 and 1997, the Ngai Tahu residency at Otago Polytechnic in 2006 and both a Quai Branly Laureate award; La Residence de Photoquai and the Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2011.
Her work has been included in several important group exhibitions and biennales including: lux et tenebris Momentum Worldwide, Berlin 2014; The Best of Times, The Worst of Times. Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, Ukraine Biennale Arsenale 2012; Ahua: A beautiful hesitation, 17th Biennale of Sydney 2010, Museum of Contemporary Art; Imposing Narratives: Beyond the Documentary in Recent New Zealand Photography, 1989, Constructed Intimacies, 1989 and NowSeeHear 1990. Prospect 2001: New Art New Zealand, all at the City Art Gallery, Wellington, Slow Release: Recent Photography from New Zealand, Heide Museum of Modern Art Melbourne, Australia and the Adam Gallery, Wellington, 2002; Te Puawai O Ngai Tahu, Christchurch Art Gallery and Pressing Flesh, Skin, Touch Intimacy, Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki in 2003 and Contemporary New Zealand Photographers, Pataka’s International Arts Festival, Porirua, 2006.
MORE ABOUT THE MOMENTUM COLLECTION >>
PHOTOS OF THE EXHIBITION OPENING
Photo Credit: Foto: Maria Kossak © Berlin-Warszawa @rtpress / „Y – Warum“ / Berlin Art Week 2016 / Secret Garden Berlin / www.moritzgruppe.de
