Tag Archives: video art

Annika Kahrs

Opening: 14.11.2019 from 18 to 21h

Exhibition: 20 and 21.11.2019 from 11 a 20h and till 30.11.2019 by appointment (t. 932160290 o galeria@galeriajoanprats.com)

Venue: Joan Prats Warehouse. Passatge Saladrigas, 5 Barcelona. Metro Poblenou

 

 

With motive of the Loop Festival, we present in our venue Joan Prats Warehouse a selection of recent videos and a sound installation by our artists Alicia Kopf, Annika Kahrs and Teresa Solar which link stories or personal reflections with the space exploration, technology and science.

 

The exhibition title, 26 thousand light years, refers to the distance that separates us from Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), a supermassive black hole located in the center of the Milky Way, the observation of which seems to confirm that black holes grow by absorbing minor ones and stars. The scientific speculation towards the outer space often approaches science fiction, as it appears in the works we present.

 

Alicia Kopf’s video Speculative Intimacy: An Understanding Of Control, 2019, suggests an emotional science fiction perspective in order to originate new stories about the interaction between bodies, human and non-human. The movie takes place in a near future where the borders between public and private have disappeared, the lives pass in continuous exposition. Michelle, its main character, investigates a concept in crisis: ¿What is intimacy? and talks about this topic with his non-human partner.

 

Annika Kahrs presents two works. The video solid surface, with hills, valleys, craters and other topographic features, primarily made of ice, 2014, shows a planetary where a starry sky is projected, at the center of which appears a circular light which would appear to be the moon, but it turns out to be a focus. In this work from 2014, the artist uses picture and narrative to make a portrait of Pluto, the vision of which was about to change, since New Horizons, an unmanned mission from NASA, was headed to its orbit. Finally it overflied it on July 14th, 2015, and could, for the first time, photograph it closely. Until then, the scientific illustrations about the planet were based on speculation.

 

The other work by Annika Kahrs is the sound installation think about two black holes colliding, then brush your teeth and go to bed, 2019. This work in two parts is a sound installation exploring gravitational waves and their detection. In 2015, the first direct observation of gravitational waves was announced by LIGO. This moment was a record of the collision of two black holes. In the first part of her installation, using a toothbrush as an instrument Kahrs has recreated the sound of their detection alongside audio data courtesy LIGO. For the second part, Kahrs has recorded interviews between Dr. Keith Thorne of LIGO and contributors from different fields.

 

In Teresa Solar’s video Ground Control, 2017, the artist transforms herself into the clay ball that turns on the potter’s wheel. The image of the turning body is accompanied with fragmented stories that connect the accident of the space shuttle Columbia, exploding into pieces due to a failure in its protective shield, with the personal injuries suffered by the artist herself. The title Ground Control has a double meaning: it is a direct reference to the material, ground or clay, and the pressure exerted on it when working on the potter’s wheel and it also refers to the operations center from which the development of a spaceship is monitored. Through the title, this minimal communication experience and conflictual balance between subject and subject matter increases in scale, linking with space travel.

 

 

Alicia Kopf (Girona, 1982) lives and works in Barcelona. Her work reflects on apparently individual issues that have become generational concerns. The expressive dimension of her work is related to her studies in Fine Arts Literature Theory and Comparative Literature. She has exhibited in museums and art centers such as Accademia Di Spagna, Rome (2019), MAC La Coruña in the 15th Naturgy art exhibition (2018); Sala Mendoza, Caracas, Mazcul, Maracaibo (2017); CCCB, Barcelona, Museum of Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia (2015); Goethe Institute, La Capella and MACBA, Barcelona (2014); Fundació Tàpies, Barcelona (2013); Bòlit La Rambla, Gerona (2011) or CaixaForum, Barcelona (2009). Recently, she has exhibited in Azkuna Centroa, Bilbao, drawings of the series ‘Conquest drawings’, within the exhibition ‘Nunca real/Siempre verdadero’ curated by Iván de la Nuez. As a novelist, her most important work is ‘Brother in ice’, published in 2015, with which she won the Documenta Prize 2015, the 2016 Llibreter Prize, the 2016 Ojo Crítico Award and the Cálamo Otra Mirada 2017.

 

 

Annika Kahrs (Achim, Germany, 1984) lives and works in Hamburg. She has been awarded a number of prizes and scholarships including the Max-Pechstein-Förderpreis–Stipendium, of Zwickau, in 2019 and the George-Maciunas-Förderpreis in 2012, donated by René Block. In 2011 she won first prize at the 20th Bundeskunstwettbewerb of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Kahrs has exhibited internationally, including Kunstverein of Kassel (2018), Kunsthalle Lingen (2017), Cité International des Arts (2016), Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2015), Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (2015), On the Road exhibition in Santiago de Compostela (2014), the Bienal Internacional de Curitiba, Brazil (2013), Hamburger Kunsthalle (2013), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2012), Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn (2011), Goldsmiths University, London (2011), and the Velada de Santa Lucia festival in Maracaibo, Venezuela (2010).

 

Teresa Solar (Madrid, 1985) lives and works in Madrid.  She has been a resident and visiting professor in the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste from Stuttgart (2016), finalist in the Award Cervezas Alhambra de Arte Emergente (ARCOmadrid 2017) and of the program for mentors Fundación Rolex (2016), she received the production scholarship of Fundación Botín (2014), of CAM (2011) and the award Generaciones (2012). Currently she presents in Index, Stockholm Ride Ride Ride, an individual exhibition that had been in Matadero (Madrid) with the title Cabalga, Cabalga, Cabalga. She has recently shown Flotation Line at Der Tank, Basel (June 2018) and in the program Compositions of the Barcelona Gallery Weekend (September, 2018) and has been part of the 2018 expedition “The Current” organized by TBA21-Academy. She has exhibited individually at La Panera Lleida (2016), Matadero Madrid (2014) and CA2M Móstoles (2012) and has participated in collective exhibitions at Haus der Kunst, Munich (March, 2018), at Kunstverein Braunschweig (June, 2018) , in the section “El futuro no es lo que va a pasar, sinóo lo que vamos a hacer” to ARCOmadrid (February 2018), at Kunstverein München, Munich (2017), the Fundación Marcelino Botín Foundation, Santander (2016) and Macro, Roma (2015), among others.

Curated by Ramón Castillo

 

 

The exhibition Habitar el vacío, curated by Ramón Castillo, gathers for the first time four Chileans artists,

Alfredo Jaar, Iván Navarro, Fernando Prats and Raúl Zurita, at Galeria Joan Prats in Barcelona.

 

The four artists, from different conceptual approaches, sensibilities and aesthetic ideologies, perform works of complaint or criticism to human tragedies occurred in different parts of the world, with a language that forces the limit of the visual and textual, through various editorial, material and technologic devices. This extreme dimension of their researches becomes the metaphor of the title Habitar el vacío: art as a way to overcome isolation or lack of empathy among people.

 

Their works converge in the generation of an alert state of the viewer-reader versus territorial, economic, political and social issues affecting people in different places of the planet where hope becomes a revolutionary act. We are introducing the visual and textual research of the four artists who challenge the senselessness and the contemporary experience report.

 

Raúl Zurita (Santiago de Chile, 1950) lives and works in Santiago de Chile. His work is marked by the Military Dictatorship, during which he was detained and tortured. Poetry, performance and urban interventions are part of a repertoire of actions that he developed critically, creatively and interdisciplinarily. Raúl Zurita alternates his literary work, poetry recitals and teaching work at Diego Portales University and Harvard. He has won major awards such as the National Prize for Literature in Chile, Pablo Neruda Award, the Italian Pericle d’Oro Award, the Guggenheim and DAAD scholarships, among others.

 

Fernando Prats (Santiago de Chile, 1967) lives and works in Barcelona since 1990. He has participated in international exhibitions such as Venice Biennale, representing Chile (2011); Mediations Biennale, Poznan, Poland (2012); Canary Islands Biennial (2009); Chile Triennial (2009) and Exposición Universal del Agua, Zaragoza (2008). He has exhibited his work in international art centers such as Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris, Fundació Miró, Barcelona or Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile.

 

Alfredo Jaar (Santiago de Chile, 1956) lives and works in New York since 1982. This artist, architect and filmmaker has exhibited in art centers of all around the world and has participated in biennials such as Venice Biennale (1986, 2007, 2009, and representing Chile, 2013), São Paulo Biennial (1987, 1989, 2010) and Kassel Documenta (1987 y 2002). Among his solo shows there are the ones in New Museum of New York, Whitechapel gallery of London, MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma, Moderna Museet of Stockholm, and Museum of Contemporary Art de Chicago. He is National Prize for Art in Chile.

 

Iván Navarro (Santiago de Chile, 1972) lives and works in New York since 1997. He has participated in international exhibitions such as Venice Biennale, representing Chile (2009), Prospect2 of New Orleans (2011), la Havana Biennial (2012) and The Disappeared/Los Desaparecidos, exhibition organized by North Dakota Museum of Art that travelled through North and South America from 2005 to 2009. His solo exhibitions include those in Matucana 100, Santiago de Chile (2015 and 2007), Museum of Contemporary Art, Aukland, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia (2015), and Frost Art Museum in Miami (2012).

 

 

The artists will be present during the opening.

A catalogue has been published for the exhibition.

Alex

Alex is a fictional character created by the artiste Pauline Bastard. With the help of an anthropologist, a lawyer, psychoanalyst, stylist, decorator and writer, Alex has been imagined and followed for more than a year in the process of integration in real life, faced with the construction of its social, administrative and emotional existence.

 

The exhibition design allows visitors to slip inside the character’s life: benches and cushions with printed objects, standard furniture and personal effects of Alex, the display evokes a domestic interior and allows to discover 6 videos of Alex‘s life, from its genesis to its “first steps”.

A casting to choose the right Alex, the meetings of professionals, the moments of the construction of a character without a past… we are attending to fragments of the beginning of an existence, a creative process, not an avatar, but a person made of flesh and bone who face up urban and social relations. The result is an experiment movie: neither fiction nor documentary, dozens of hours of film are evidence of the existence of Alex.

 

With this Project, Pauline Bastard raises a number of questions.

How to manipulate the creative form? How to manipulate the natural and the supernatural without falling into chaos?

Alex talks about the construction of identity, of our society. Who is Alex?

 

This project has been awarded by Audi Talent Award and had receive the support of CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques).

 

Pauline Bastard creates complex narratives developed through installations, films and sculptures containing and relating to her experiments. Through collaborations she questions the construction of the self and its place in the contemporary world.

Pauline Bastard creates stories, making them happen, using situations as matter and taking seemingly unrealizable experiences as material for production.