Iván Buenader’s video performance, Volkspark, is the latest in a series of impromptu dance performances enacted within the context of every Artist Residency in which he participates. In this case, the work results from his 3-month Residency at MOMENTUM AiR during the summer and autumn of 2021 – a period of cautiously hopeful ‘normality’ in a city still learning to cope with the ongoing aftermath of the pandemic. Buenader is not a dancer. His dance series is not intended as a performance of technical competence, but rather, as his way of experientially engaging with every Residency location by means of mapping the movements of his body onto that space – be it a studio, cityscape, or countryside. The very act of movement through space connotes a freedom of which many were deprived during the long months of pandemic lockdown. While the title of the chosen soundtrack to this performance – “(I just don’t wanna) Miss A Thing” by Kylie Minogue – evokes the thirst for actual experience after months of isolation, coupled with the artist’s journey of discovery through Berlin’s multifaceted cityscape. In Volkspark (meaning People’s Park in German), Buenader dances through Berlin’s oldest public park: Volkspark Friedrichshain. Dressed in clothes found on the streets – the literal social fabric of Berlin – he moves amidst various monuments inscribed with references to battles, conquests, nations, historical milestones, popular mythologies, and literary characters of children’s fables (the Fountain of Fairy Tales; the Berlin Bear; statues of Frederick the Great, the Javelin Thrower, and Mother and Child; Memorials for German fighters in the Spanish Civil War, and for Polish soldiers and anti-fascist Germans in WWII; and stairs on the hill covering the remains of one of several WWII bunkers and flak towers still inscribed within the fabric of the cityscape).

“The remains that are hidden and lie buried under the appearance of a hill, as well as the static, immovable, inert sculptures that function as tributes to powerful entities or to people who gave their lives, voluntarily or involuntarily, to defend historical or temporal community values, they play a symbolic game with the living, mobile, restless body, which teaches freedom as it orbits around these monoliths, calling for a re-interpretation of memory.” – Iván Buenader

This work forms part of Buenader’s ongoing series of paint on textile works. Literally addressing the social fabric, the artist paints abstract alphabets of signs and symbols onto found materials collected in the various cities to which his peripatetic practice leads him. Scarves, blankets, tablecloths, shower curtains, and more found on the street, given by friends, or discovered in flea markets – these relics of the social fabric form the canvases for Buenader’s interventions.

Iván Buenader (b. 1972 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lives and works in Alicante, Spain and Mexico City, Mexico).

Iván Buenader is an Argentinian writer and visual artist based between Alicante and Mexico City. He graduated in Computer Science from the University of Buenos Aires. He has exhibited his work (painting, photography, video, installation) in contemporary art venues in Latin America, the United States, Canada, India and Europe, while participating in numerous artist residencies – including MOMENTUM AiR in August – November 2021. He has conceptualized and produced collective interdisciplinary projects including poetry, music, dance and performance (‘CFW Poet Agency’). He is author of 11 novels and 6 books of experimental poetry.

deluge of delusion 1 (2021), digital print on canvas and 10 watercolors on paper, 190cm x 390cm

deluge of delusion 1 was made during the first pandemic lockdown in the spring of 2020, intended to be shown in Claudia Chaseling’s solo exhibition, mutopia 5, at the Australian Embassy in Berlin. This 4-month exhibition took place, despite pandemic restrictions. However, this particular work was not shown. We were required to remove deluge of delusion 1 from the exhibition due to its political content. For an artwork to fall victim to censorship in this day and age in Germany – though technically on Australian soil – should be as much a compliment as an outrage. In States of Emergency, we are proud to present deluge of delusion 1 for the first time.

Chaseling’s works are, indeed, inherently political. It took a global pandemic to stop the world in its tracks under the threat of an invisible killer which pays no heed to national borders or political will. Yet Claudia Chaseling has been painting another such invisible killer for over a decade. While the eyes and hearts of the world were focused on the viral threat and aftermath of COVID-19, Chaseling, working in her studio throughout the first lockdown, was addressing another kind of insidious invisible killer: radiation and its repercussions – namely, the radioactive contamination of depleted uranium munitions. The visual language Chaseling has created and the imagery in her work consists of distorted landscapes in toxic colors, poisoned places, mutated creatures and plants whose deformation is caused by radioactive contamination. Her images are not predictions of some post-apocalyptic future, but rather the result of her research into historic and ongoing ways in which we continue to poison our planet with the byproducts of wars and nuclear accidents. To ground the psychedelic fantasy of her imagery in the harsh realities of the nuclear chain her work exposes, Chaseling embeds within her paintings quotations and URLs referencing her source materials, mapping the places polluted by depleted uranium – an environmental contaminant that is a derivative waste product of nuclear power and nuclear weapons technology. Inscribing fact into figuration, normally the text is embedded seamlessly within the spacial structure of each painting, becoming itself an abstract form. Yet in deluge of delusion 1, Chaseling, working for the first time in cooperation with designer Emilio Rapanà, foregrounds quotations from her research, using the text and design to frame 10 small watercolor studies for her large spatial paintings. The resulting “deluge of delusions” both informs and protests about the fatal status quo of global energy and arms industries, and the nuclear chain that leads to radioactive contamination and its poisoning of our planet. Claudia Chaseling has for over a decade dedicated her practice to the pernicious weapon of mass destruction which is depleted uranium. Yet it remains, to this day, no less of a global emergency than when she began.

Claudia Chaseling (b.1973 in Munich, Germany. Lives between Berlin, Germany and Canberra, Australia.)

Claudia Chaseling studied at Academy for Visual Arts in Munich, Germany, and Academy of Visual Arts in Vienna, Austria. She received her Master’s degree in Visual Arts from both the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin, and the School of Art at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, where she also completed her PhD in Visual Arts. Chaseling is known for the practice of Spatial Painting, site-mutative biomorphic abstract works and murals, which cover walls, floors and ceilings. The Spatial Paintings are drafted from one particular viewpoint, to distort and dissolve the familiar geometry of the space, whilst carrying socio-political meaning. In 2013 she published the graphic novel Murphy the mutant that became an anchor for her work to follow. The diverse body of works, from Spatial Painting to the Graphic Novels, deal with facts and the consequences of today’s socio-political systems and their effects on the environment.

Chaseling has exhibited her work in over sixty solo and group exhibitions, notably in the United States, Australia and Europe. Among other major international exhibitions, her work has been featured in the X-Border Biennial, Finland; the Luela Art Biennial, Sweden; and the Lorne Sculpture Biennial, Australia. Recent projects include solo exhibitions at Art Gallery Nadezda Petrovic, Cacak, Serbia; Wollongong Art Gallery and Yuill Crowely Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Kunstverein Duisburg; Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden; with MOMENTUM at the Australian Embassy, Berlin; at Rohkunstbau 26 in Schloss Lieberose, Germany; and with Art in Buildings in Milwaukee and New York City, USA. Major grants and scholarships received in Australia and Germany include the DAAD; the Samstag Scholarship; the Studio Award of the Karl Hofer Society; the Australia Council for the Arts Grant in 2014; and the 2015/16 artsACT Project Grant. She has taken part in various international visiting artists programs and artists residencies, including Yaddo in New York; Art Omi and the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York City; Texas A&M University; the Australian National University (ANU); amongst others. The Verlag für zeitgenoessische Kunst und Theorie Berlin published her first extensive monograph in 2016. In 2022 the book “Dissonance – Painting in Germany Today“ will be published by DCV featuring 80 artists of her generation: the “millennial painters”.

MORE INFO >> https://www.momentumworldwide.org/exhibitions/mutopia5/

The Unbelievables series of digital montages, like so much of Margret Eicher’s practice, addresses the strongly increasing reliance on images in our society. It is no longer text and language that primarily shape political, social and individual attitudes, but ubiquitous images whose truth content is usually no longer verified, and whose meaning can too easily be taken out of context. Invoking academic research in image theory and visual culture alongside quotations from art history, Margret Eicher’s work is about how we think in images. Comingling elements of the Baroque with found images from the internet depicting violent protestors and contemporary tattoo, The Unbelievables series of work brings stark parallels between decorative culture and the daily realities of our current moment of crisis. Baroque vases and ornamental amphorae are part of a courtly pictorial tradition of decorative objects for the bourgeoisie intended as a sign of status, wealth, and power. Such sets of vases made of porcelain and fine china appear in this period, traditionally placed in threes or fives as crowning pieces on mantels or in cabinets. The vessels were not only ornamentally decorated, but often featured pictorial cartouches that paid homage to rulers in effigies, celebrated events, or honored famous personalities of the times. Eicher’s digital montages in The Unbelievables series take this veneration and homage to the extreme by superimposing press photos of violent protesters onto authentic cartouche images of historical vases. By means of this inversion, Eicher addresses the dissolution of a common value system and the culturally divisive tendencies in our society. Made amidst the pandemic, the contrasting duality inherent in these works is a perfect reflection of our times, where the news images of death and protests – from Black Lives Matter to the lunacy of antivaxers – which filled the long days of lockdown, were accompanied by the seemingly endless parade of Amazon deliveries to all our neighbors ceaselessly shopping.

Margret Eicher (b. 1955 in Viersen, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Margret Eicher works primarily with intricate digital collages produced as large format tapestries woven on a digital loom. Invoking the traditional use of the tapestry as a tool of wealth and power, and commenting on our increasing reliance on digital culture, Eicher fills her tapestries with contemporary icons from our overly mediated age alongside quotations from art history.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Stade, Schloß Agathenburg, Germany (2010); Erarta-Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian (2011); Goethe-Institut Nancy (F) Strasbourg (F) ARTE /ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany (2011); Hamburg Galerie Carolyn Heinz, Hamburg, Germany (2012); Kunstmuseum Heidenheim, Germany (2012); Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, Berlin Orangerie Schloss Charlottenburg, Germany (2013); Anger Museum Erfurt, Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Germany (2014); CACTicino, Bellinzona, Switzerland (2014); Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin, Germany (2015); Gallery Baku, Azerbaijan (2015); Port 25 Mannheim, Germany (2016); Kunstverein Ulm, Germany (2017); Sprengel Museum, Hannover, Germany (2018); Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany (2020); Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, Germany (2021); Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin, Germany (2021). Recent group exhibitions include: Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany (2008); Galerie Eugen Lendl, Graz, Austria (2010); Musee des Beaux-Arts de Tournai, Tournai, Belgium (2011); MOCAK, Krakow, Poland (2012); Museum Liner, Appenzell, Switzerland (2012); Rohkunstbau, Berlin/Roskow, Germany (2013); Tichy Foundation, Prague, Czech Republic (2013); MPK, Kaiserslautern, Germany (2014); Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany (2014); Gallery of Art Critics Palace Adria, Prague, Czech Republic (2015); KHM, Vienna, Austria (2015); Stresa, Italy (2015); Kaiserslautern, Germany (2016); Museum Liner, Appenzell, Switzerland (2017); Leipzig, Germany (2017); Galerie Deschler, Berlin, Germany (2017); Singen, Kunstmuseum, Germany (2017); ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2017); Kunstverein Pforzheim , Haus am Lützowplatz Berlin, Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam, Germany (2018); Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany (2019); Room Berlin, Germany (2019); Stiftung Staatlicher Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, Germany (2019); Berlin, Germany (2020); MOMENTUM & Kleiner von Wiese, Zionkirche, Berlin, Germany (2021); Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden, Germany (2021).

Kaffeeklatsch (2019/2020), Video Performance, HD, 6’17”, on loan from the artist

In her video performance and accompanying discussion series Kaffeeklatsch, Nezaket Ekici refers to the German afternoon ritual of ‘coffee and cake’, a time of meeting and togetherness for many German families. The history of coffee gossip is a long one. In Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries, with the rise of the bourgeoisie, women began meeting for coffee gossip – “Kränzchen” – to exchange ideas among themselves, allowing them a taste of freedoms that up until then had been reserved for men in social circles. Nezaket Ekici addresses the tradition of the coffee klatsch from her perspective as a migrant and a fully integrated German, questioning her sense of belonging in German society. She asks herself what her own German tradition is – which leads to the general question of what actually is German tradition? In order to answer these questions, Ekici stages herself as three characters dressed in traditional German costumes from the Black Forest, the Spreewald, and Thuringia, representing the south, the north and the center of Germany. With the focus on the articulation, gestures, and facial expressions of the performer, Ekici drinks coffee with her doppelgangers in this playful video addressing the fine line between foreignness and belonging. Watching this work now – on the cusp of the third year of social distancing and intermittent lockdowns, when we have all spent far too much time in our own company – we come to see how very precious this simple freedom is, to gather together with one another.

Nezaket Ekici (b. 1970 in Kirsehir, Turkey. Lives and works in Berlin & Stuttgart, Germany and Istanbul, Turkey.)

Nezaket Ekici holds a degree in Fine Arts, an MA in Art Pedagogy, and an MFA degree, having studied Art History and Sculpture at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University and Fine Arts Academy Munich (1994-2000). From 2001 to 2004 she studied Performance Art under Marina Abramović at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Braunschweig. Ekici’s video, installations and performances are often process-based and ask viewers to derive their own emotional and intellectual interpretations. In her work, complex, often controversial topics are tackled with humor in highly aesthetic compostions. Ekici frequently uses her own Turkish origins and education as a subject of tension, pitting her background against her living environment in Germany. Cultural, geographic and individual boundaries, transgressions, gender, authorial bodies, art history, religion, culture and politics are central to Ekici’s works. By highlighting these themes in everyday life and placing them in a new context, she aims to interconnect every element to form a total work of art — a Gesamtkunstwerk. Nezaket Ekici has presented more than 250 different performances in more than 170 cities in over 60 countries on 4 continents.

Selected international exhibitions since 2000 include: Museum Haus der Kunst in Munich; The Irish Museum of Modern art in Dublin; 25. May Museum Belgrade; PAC Milano; Venice Biennale; P.S.1 New York; Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam; Reina Sophia Museum, Madrid; Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul; The Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei/ Taiwan; Poznan Biennale; Curiciba Biennale; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Istanbul Modern; Marta Herford; Minsheng Art Museum Shanghai; Haus am Waldsee Berlin; KunstWerke Berlin; Oslo Museum; The Contemporary Art Gallery of Georgia, Georgia National Museum, Tbilisi; Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Total Museum Seoul, and many more. Ekici was an Artist-in-Residence at the Cultural Academy Tarabya, Istanbul (2013-14), was the recipient of the Rome Prize for an Artist Residency at the German Academy, Villa Massimo, Rome (in 2016-17); and participated in the Schlingensief Opera Village Residency in Burkina Faso, Africa (2021). She received the Paula Modersohn-Becker Art Award (2018), and received the Berlin Culur Senate prize for her Artist Residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, New York (2020).

Messenger Irma / Messenger Dora / Messenger Megi / Messenger Maria / Messenger Mangkhut, [Barcode: Commodity Dream], (2021),
5 framed prints, ink print on paper, each 29 cm x 42 cm (53cm x 63 cm with frame)

The five prints shown in this exhibition are digital studies for a series of five large paintings (each 300 x 200 cm) from Marković’s conceptual practice of Barcode Paintings, with which he has been working since 2008. This body of work consists of stripes that signify written words, often intertwined with visual imagery. Barcodes are the product of a systematic process of codification, at the end of which only a rhythmic series of vertical lines remains. Every text can be translated into a barcode and thereby enter the system of global trade. It is possible to scan the bar code with a laser reader or a smartphone app to decode its meaning. Marković’s seemingly abstract images can thus be translated into concrete content.

Marković’s Messengers series is composed of spatial images that, by means of abstract coding, thematize the relationship between environmental destruction through climate change, toxic pollution, current and historical economic interests and their impact on the planet Earth. The five prints consist of barcodes intertwined with satellite images of hurricanes and typhoons which have hit various geographical regions since 2010. Each of these works is composed of an interwoven matrix of barcode and meteorological satellite image of a natural disaster. The barcodes embedded in these works translate to the term “Commodity Dream”. While the titles of the works, taken from the sweetly innocent female names given to these hurricanes and typhoons by the World Meteorological Organization, form a stark counterpoint to the harsh truths and tragic aftermath of such natural disasters.

This body of work conceptually and visually addresses the effects of climate change leading to super-storms and massive fires (which the artist has experienced in recent years in Australia), resulting in damage, death and displacement on a massive scale. This environmental devastation is a consequence of the climate catastrophe resulting from humankind’s mistreatment of the planet which sustains us; a vicious cycle pulling us ever closer to the brink of disaster. Driven by human greed and anomalous management of resources, large geographical areas of healthy nature are disappearing from the face of the Earth due to economic colonization and ecocide by aggressive corporations. The Messengers series addresses how the profit-oriented focus of humanity is a disastrous commodification of the world. If things continue as they are, human greed will turn our planet into a consumed good, like any other commodity.

– Milovan Destil Marković

Milovan Destil Marković (b. in 1957 in Čačak, Serbia. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

Milovan Destil Marković is a conceptual artist whose practice spans installation, painting, performance, and video. Marković studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Arts, Belgrade, where he graduated in 1983. Defining himself as a conceptual painter, Marković has exhibited extensively in Europe, Asia, Australia, and in the Americas. His work was featured in the 42nd Venice Biennial (Aperto ’86); 4th Istanbul Biennial; 46th Venice Biennial; 6th Triennial New Delhi, India; the 56th, 49th, 24th October Salon, Belgrade Biennale; 2018 Lorne Sculpture Biennale; Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary Art Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art Kumamoto; MoMA PS1, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken; The Artist’s Museum, Lodz; National Museum, Prague; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; MSURS Museum of Contemporary Art, Banja Luka; Landesmuseum Graz; Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf; Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana; National Gallery, Athens; Art Museum Foundation Military Museum, Istanbul; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Kunstverein Hamburg; Kunstvoreningen Bergen; Kunstverein Jena; Galleri F15 Oslo; Nishido Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Fei Contemporary Art Center, Shanghai; the art program of the European Capitol of Culture Novi Sad; and many other notable institutions. Marković’s works are held by numerous public and private collections throughout the world, including: Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Japan; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Germany; Museum of the City of Belgrade, Serbia; Istanbul Art Museum Foundation, Istanbul, Turkey; Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia; Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Germany; Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria; The Artists’ Museum, Lodz, Poland; MOMENTUM, Berlin, Germany; amongst others.