Exhibitions

Venue: About Change Collection, Berlin

Dates: 2nd May 2008

Notes: with Birgit Brenner, Ellen Gallagher, Tue Greenfort, Katja Strunz, Ulla von Brandenburg & Pae White

The About Change, Collection focuses on collage and assemblage as its most significant aspects, spotlighting the principle of combining diverse materials, contexts, and contents as well as the history of this technique in general. In its first phase the About Change, Collection project sheds light on the range of the collecting interest. It also acts as a catalyst for a series of related events which, taking individual works of art or artists as a starting point, address the relationship between the arts and other fields of human activity. The initial show, titled Introduction, presented works by Ceal Floyer, Annette Kelm, Jon Kessler, Jonathan Meese, Tobias Rehberger, Kurt Schwitters, Taryn Simon, and Andreas Slominski.

Chapter One is the second exhibition of works from the About Change, Collection and will show works by Birgit Brenner, Raphael Danke, Ellen Gallagher, Tue Greenfort, Katja Strunz, Ulla von Brandenburg, and Pae White.

Chapter One immediately reveals the collection’s fundamental openness. While Ellen Gallagher relates the classical modern concept of collage to her own, specifically Black American position, Tue Greenfort’s works draw on the mediate dialogue between artistic and scientific forms of visualization, bringing together (hi)stories of diverse images from different worlds. The works created in situ demonstrate yet another aspect of the collage concept. Ulla von Brandenburg, Pae White, and Birgit Brenner all worked on site to create or recreate artistic productions specifically for Chapter One. All three came up with impressive solutions that will make a lasting impact.

Pae White’s mobile O V E R N E A T H (2005) is the opening exhibit in Chapter One and as such redefines the gallery’s entrance area. The highly dynamic volume combines hundreds of individual elements in a colorful collage which seen from different perspectives reveals ever new aspects, releasing its chromatic charge into the exhibition space. White’s work thus seems to form a biomorphic, living counterpart to Katja Strunz’s constructivist wall sculpture (a drop in time, 2008) made of wood and steel.

Birgit Brenner’s large-scale installation Die besten Jahre. (2005) references the various levels of the medium of film and embroils them in an intriguing game. Narration, technical instructions, images, and dialogue are carefully separated and then reintegrated in a synesthetic spatial experience. The result is a perturbing scenario in which fragmented photographs, written signs, strands of wool, texts, and stage directions use the environment in the Kabakovian sense to let visitors direct, act, and produce their own films.

The abstract mural by Ulla von Brandenburg (Stage II, 2007) references her video works, which involve the artist’s friends and acquaintances in tableaux vivants-style scenes. The mural is a reminder of these scenes, bringing them back in a haunting reminiscence.

Ellen Gallagher’s installation DeLuxe (2004/05) is based on advertisements designed specially for Black American consumers. Using the faces and texts depicted in the ads, she playfully explores issues of racism and social or gender identity while at the same time deconstructing the mechanisms of stereotyping prevalent in the mass media and in advertising.

Titled Die Entfernung von Lindsay Eligson (2006), Raphael Danke’s collage also refers to cinema. Similar to a deserted film set or an empty stage, it evokes the sense of energy that lingers where an actor has just made his exit.

Tue Greenfort’s installation Medusa (2007) playfully combines art and artifact with natural history and the history of scientific visualization. His Murano glass model of a medusa—a jellyfish—could be either a work of art, an artifact, or a scientific display model.

Chapter One follows the principles first established in the Introduction show. The individual items are thus presented within the context of other works, generating correspondences that are owed to the collection’s openness and its focus on the art form of collage while eschewing the categories of art history or any other canon.

Under this banner the venue at Kupfergraben 10 also hosts the Interzone series of talks. The title is a reference to William S. Burroughs, who coined the expression to denote a cut-up wonderland transcending all bounds of convention, ideas, perceptions, and habits. Within the context of the About Change, Collection project, Interzone refers to a format in which artists represented in the show choose someone from outside the cultural domain to meet and talk in a chaired debate. All talks are recorded on video and made available as downloads on the About Change, Collection website (www.aboutchangecollection.com). In February 2008 artist Tobias Rehberger welcomed genetic scientist Professor Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker in Interzone No. 1. The second Interzone is scheduled for Fall 2008 and will be hosted by Taryn Simon, who also participated in the initial showing of the About Change, Collection.