(En) We are pleased to simultaneously present two group exhibitions “Time, Process” and “Process, Time” in our galleries in Karlsruhe and Berlin. Both exhibitions connect art works where time – taken as a moment in time – as well as its processuality play a vital role in the design of the particular works. In Berlin we present under the heading “Process, Time” works from Katinka Bock, Björn Braun, Henrik Hakansson, John Miller, Helen Mirra and Jonathan Monk. Mirra becomes the connection to our gallery in Karlsruhe: in the exhibition titled “Time, Process” not only Mirra’s works can be seen, but also those by Peter Dreher and Gabriel Vormstein. The media used by the artists such as painting, sculpture, installation, film and photography are building a framework for the process they are describing. The trace to mark the process of time, becomes equally effective for the content as well as for the materiality of the artistic description. When considered closely time and process seem like an antagonistic and a mutually induced couple likewise: Time and Process are conditions – but, however, they are conditions that elapse and in the course of their process negate and acknowledge each other. Time becomes productive, when thought of as a process and vice versa.
Henrik Hakansson refers to (natural) cycles with works, in which he equally adopts and effectively embeds those cycles. It is often fragments of nature that the artist transfers into a cultural context. Thereby he is creating almost surreal spatial structures. In the course of this Hakanssons moments of irritation seem like a subtle dialogue between man, nature and space. Plants, living creatures or their light and temperature induced changeability become the formative as well as the conceptual subject of his work. In our gallery space in Berlin the artist shows the work „Snail Drawing“: on seven sheets of paper we can see the paths of snails, that have been dipped into food coulouring before crossing the respective paper. Their trails become visible and remain as organic patterns on the paper. Each of the drawings is dated, whereby the distance covered by a snail marks the time from beginning to completion of the individual work.
Katinka Bocks sculptures and installations describe space by defining it as part of their materiality: her works formed out of stone, clay, sand, metal or fabrics allow for a narration that originates from the individual object as well as from the reference between the works and the so described structure of space. Along with including all elements the artist uses for the realization of her works fundamental characteristics like attraction, repulsion, expansion and contraction of mass. Bock intends the creation of connections, whereas the collaboration and the changing abilities of the sculpture and the space involve a determination of form that is characterized by reaction. Her works arise from encounters with concrete and on-going situations, which Katinka Bock translates into specifically materialistic and spatial proportions. In our Berlin gallery we present the installation “Kleine Kreise”. A seesaw-like construction consisting of a steel tube, a ceramic rod and a granite panel is held by an partially amorphously deformed ceramic tube. Blue bike tire tracks are crossing the tube and simultaneously encircles the sculpture which circulates between balance and disbalance.
Björn Brauns work results from a transformation process: in a synthesis of adding and removing the artist generates images, collages, objects and spatial complexes which circulate between a natural formation and an artistic creation. For Braun paper, wood, fibres and feathers become fundamentals that he puts into correspondence with literature, artificially produced textile fabrics or objects found in nature and that are put into a pictorial dialogue. By breaking-up or shifting the accustomed point of view Braun opposes his conceptual-minimalistic use of forms with an anarchistic gesture that transfers the figurative of his works towards abstraction. In the context of our exhibition in the gallery space in Berlin we present a wooden ladder of which Braun has removed footsteps and in a process lasting several days dissolved the woodfibres in water and finally made them into paper. In the exhibition the ladder corresponds with the picture that hangs on the opposite wall and enters a dialogue with the ladder as its medial conversion.
In his objects, paintings and texts the artist and author John Miller highlights different social desires and criticizes them metaphorically. In our space in Berlin we show an excerpt from his photographic project “Middle of the Day”, which John Miller has been pursuing continuously since 1994. The artist takes photographs in the afternoons between 12pm and 2pm at various places of different urban locations. The scenes – mostly people on their way through the city – are similar in their composition. However, all of the meanwhile 1600 pictures depicts one particular timeframe (the lunch break), that connects the free time with the working hours, which defines a time of the day that opens up for freedom but nevertheless heralds an evanescence with the restriction of this freedom. The passage-like excerpts show movement, distraction and stagnation alike, people in their consumerist behaviour and also urban landscapes exempted from their actors.
Jonathan Monks objects and installations iridescent between reminiscence, imagination and a specific condition. The artist attributes to the individual work a special temporality, which he questions at the same time – often in a humorous way. By comprising, well almost nostalgically archiving a (current) object of daily use, the artist undermines its function and usability. This can be seen in “The Odd Couple”, which we show in our Berlin gallery: two grandfather clocks facing each other whose time display is not readable due to the positioning of the clocks – ultimately their own impermanence becomes evident. In the course of the exhibition Jonathan Monk will realize an additional work: “Greta-Garbo-Straße 10”. The artist will have a wall piece built that is a reconstruction of the wall tiles of house number 10 of the Greta-Garbo-Straße in Berlin. The tiles will be put up on one of our gallery walls during the opening exhibition.
Helen Mirras works relate to a specific location with found – natural, cultural – products whose meaning she reformulates by adopting them and putting them into a narrative context. Photography, film, sound, language and textile fabrics stand in a conceptual dialogue with classic genres like sculpture, painting and drawing. By intertwining and dissolving materialities and categories the artist generates a minimalistic orientated picture and object language that is mostly accompanied by an abstract link between time and space: Mirra creates references to a reality that lies beyond her works and that comprises – her own – movement in space and time and conveys them as a snapshot into the exhibition setting. The works presented in our galleries in Berlin and Karlsruhe tie on Mirras exhibition “beforsten” in 2000 in our gallery in Karlsruhe, as well as her group of works “Field Recordings” (currently in the Bonner Kunstverein). Both group of works are preceeded by walks during which the artist choses objects like branches or stones found in the natural surroundings and ceates an on site China ink or oil print of those on canvas.They not only show abstract landscape contours in their imagery, but they are also a document of Mirras transition, that is divided into sequences, and her documentation of nature.
Christina Irrgang
Translation: Teresa Schwarz