Tag Archives: video

Cabello/Carceller

 

We are pleased to participate to LOOP FAIR 2023, which takes place in Hotel Almanac Barcelona, from 21th till 23th of November, 2023. We are presenting a recent work by Cabello/Carceller Una película sin ninguna intención, 2022 (A Film With No Intention), a 3-channel video installation that will takes on a particular resonance in the hotel room.

 

“Una película sin ninguna intención is inspired by a brief fragment — only a few seconds — of the film Les rendez-vous d’Anna by Chantal Akerman. The action places the protagonist alone in a nondescript hotel room. Anna has just entered. She goes to the windows and, before opening one of them, draws back a sheer curtain in order to observe an industrial city outside. The scene does not reproduce the original script of the film. If it had been faithful to what was written, the world that the protagonist contemplates from the window would have been visually shared with the public; but ultimately, in the images we can only see the protagonist from behind, looking outward.

 

 What interested us most about this seemingly insignificant scene was its ability to evoke the life experience of those of us who, due to different circumstances, do not fit into the hegemonic model of coexistence. Isolation, incomprehension, distance, body. Anna leaves that room and pretends to interact with the others. In Una película sin ninguna intención, A. (a polysemic abbreviation in reference to Franz Kafka’s character K., to whom Akerman also may have referred) occupies an indefinite space in front of three windows, a sheer curtain, and an opaque curtain. Unlike Anna, A. never leaves that physical space.”

 

Cabello/Carceller

 

Opening 29 March, 7 pm, with the presence of the artist

 

 

We are pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Tadáskía (Rio de Janeiro, 1993) at Galeria Joan Prats.

 

rara ocellet (Rare bird) brings together a selection of Tadáskía’s latest works developed during her residency at the Salzburger Kunstverein (Austria) and Barcelona between the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. The exhibition rara ocellet presents drawings, canvases, sculptures, photographs and a video installation and is accompanied by a text by Ingrid Blanco Díaz (Havana, 1972), independent curator and researcher based in Barcelona.

 

This exhibition is the door to the almost mystical imaginary of the artist, where she not only represents her work, but also her relationship with the world. The works that we will show transport us to a lively and colorful universe to offer us the dreams of her childhood or the intimacy of her family. In the exhibition, the figure of the bird stands out. “Ocellets is an affectionate way of calling birds in Catalan. It is also the name of the square next to where I was in Barcelona for the first time. Which made me think of the people and the food in the same way I think of the birds that migrate from one place to another, soon changing language and coexistence” (Tadáskía).

 

In the words of Ingrid Blanco: “rara ocellet brings together several of the narrative processes through which the artist unveils the tools she deploys to imagine and to take hold of herself. Her work is a constant research on her place in the world and how she relates to it.  Through her performances, in her relationship with objects, materials, shapes, textures and colors, she expresses her identity and reveals the decisions she makes to build and exist. The community, the family, the body, emotional ties, forms of interconnection, life experiences, the magical and the ancestral are some of the axes that channel her work.”

 

Tadáskía’s production can be grouped into what curator Clarissa Diniz (Recife, Brazil, 1985) called “families,” sets of works with similar characteristics that create a relationship between them. The artist is interested in presenting the spirit of things, in a procedure located between figuration and abstraction; where the simple becomes mystical. In her drawings of volatile and sensitive qualities, often made with simple materials such as recycled paper, colored pencils or nail polish, singular assemblages coexist, sometimes complementary, sometimes dissident. “Depending on where we are, there can be transformations in form, color, line.” (Tadáskía)

 

Tadáskía is a visual artist, writer, trans and black. Her imaginary is backed by visible and invisible things. Whether in drawings, photographs, installations, textile works or “apparitions,” Tadáskía establishes a relationship with matter that can emerge from the encounter, creating around her Afrodiasporic imaginaries and a syncretic spirituality.  In her works, the artist suggests other notions of time and space as opposed to binarisms, also raising questions in the fields of form, line and color.

 

Tadáskía (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1993) lives and works between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. She holds a degree in Visual Arts from UERJ (2012-2016) and a Master’s degree in Education from UFRJ (2019-2021). In 2022 she had her first solo exhibition noite e dia in, São Paulo, and also in Europe, during her residency at Homesession, Barcelona. She has participated in recent group exhibitions at MAM, São Paulo, 2022; ISLAA, New York; Triangle Asterides, Marseille; Framer Framed, Amsterdam; Madragoa, Lisbon; Casa de Cultura do Parque, São Paulo; Casa Zalszupin, São Paulo (2022); Pivô, São Paulo; Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo; Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo; Casa da Cultura da Comporta; EAV Parque Lage (2021); Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro (2020-21); Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro; EAV Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro (2019-2020). In 2023 she has been in residence at Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg.

 

Thanks to Loop, Homesession

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hassan Fathy

CASA ÁRABE MADRID. Hassan Fathy: a contracorriente

 

28/01 – 16/05/2021

 

 

 

A partir del 28 de enero, Casa Árabe ofrece en Madrid la exposición Hassan Fathy: a contracorriente, comisariada por José Tono Martínez, en la que se recogen planos, maquetas, fotografías y libros del conocido como “el arquitecto de los pobres”. En este marco, se presentarán algunas obras de Hannah Collins y su visión personal del arquitecto, incluyendo el video I will make up a song and sing it in a theatre with night air above my head.

 

 

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As of January 28, Casa Árabe offers in Madrid the exhibition Hassan Fathy: a contracorriente (against the current), curated by José Tono Martínez, in which plans, models, photographs and books by the “architect of the poor” are collected. In this context, some works by Hannah Collins will be presented, along with her personal vision of the architect, including the video I will make up a song and sing it in a theatre with night air above my head

 

 

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MoMa PS1

MoMA PS1 now screening “Political Advertisement X: 1952–2020 (2020)” at the MOMA Magazine.

 

From 19.01 til 31.01.2021, you can watch the film “Political Advertisement X: 1952–2020 (2020)” by Muntadas and Marshall Reese online, along with Artur Żmijewski’s “Democracies” (2009) and Bani Abidi’s “RESERVED” (2006).

 

Drawn primarily from MoMA’s collection, and looking ahead to the forthcoming exhibition “Signals: The Politics of Video”, the selection of works takes on the newly omnipresent impact of video on politics, on the cusp of world change.

 

Artists have created some of the most prescient and perceptive takes on this media transformation. Here, in this limited screening series, we present an international selection of artists’ experiments that feel uncannily relevant to our relationship with video today.

 

 

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¿Para qué sirven las canciones? 

La Casa Encendida. 

Del 08 de octubre al 10 de enero de 2021. 

 

 

La Casa Encendida dedica esta exposición a mostrar la obra más reciente de Carles Congost en la que a su vez presenta su nuevo trabajo ‘¿Para qué sirven las canciones?’, creado específicamente para este proyecto.

 

‘¿Para qué sirven las canciones?’ es la nueva pieza realizada por el artista, que articula un relato juvenil de carácter urbano en el que establece una serie de preguntas acerca de las nuevas generaciones, su inconformismo, las vías de resistencia individual ante las imposiciones sistémicas, la precarización y los sueños o ideales frustrados en el contexto actual de continua crisis del modelo capitalista.

 

La exposición acoge, además, cuatro de sus últimas obras: ‘Simply the Best’, ‘Wonders’, ‘Abans de la casa’ y ‘Paradigm’, que compartirán espacio en formato de vídeo instalaciones.

 

 

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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.

Perejaume, surar. FIAC

CAT

En el marc de FIAC, Cinéphémère es presenta un vídeo de Perejaume, programa comissariat per Carolina Ciuti.

 

CAST

En el marco de FIAC, Cinéphémère se presenta un video de Perejaume, programa comisariado por Carolina

 

ENG

In the framework of FIAC, Cinéphémère presents a video of Perejaume, a program curated by Carolina Ciuti.

 

 

Perejaume

Surar, 2009, 9 min 50

 

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A good Story never started with a Glass of Milk

Episodes of the series  “Alex” by Pauline Bastard
Now online on forde.ch

 

A good Story never started with a Glass of Milk’ is a polyphonic exhibition based around the idea of the anecdote. Instead of works of art, this show will gather oral material through a serie of public live meetings with the artists. However, it will not be a question of « telling » or « describing » pieces instead of showing them, nor is it about art at all. Maybe it’s not exactly an exhibition, but since art has always been about telling stories, it still counts.The anecdote is an archaic that gathered people together around the fire, around a meal. Brief and exemplary, the anecdote is a story that comes after the fact, that interprets reality and delivers a meaning, a secret. A collection of sensations, affects, reflections, images, it punctuates the language of the philosopher who uses it to reveal the complexity of a thought; it is a « savoir-dire », a theory in action, a mnemonic. (Definition borrowed from Claire de Ribaupierre, Anecdotes, JRP 2007)

 

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Hannah Collins

21.06 – 13.10.2019

FUNDACIÓ ANTONI TÀPIES

 

Conversación / Conversation 20.06, 19.00h / 7pm

Conversación con Hannah Collins y Anna Puigjaner en el auditorio de la Fundació Tàpies, 20.06, 19.00h  /  Conversation with Hannah Collins and Anna Puigjaner at the Fundació Tàpies auditorium, 20.06, 7 p.m.

 

Hannah Collins, artista, y Anna Puigjaner, doctora en arquitectura, cofundadora de MAIO arquitectos y autora de Kitchenless City, conversarán sobre arquitectura, colectivismo y sostenibilidad durante la presentación de la exposición que pone el foco en la figura arquitecto egipcio Hassan Fathy (1900-1989).

Hannah Collins, artist, and Anna Puigjaner, Ph.D. in architecture, co-founder of MAIO architects and author of Kitchenless City, will talk about architecture, collectivism and sustainability during the presentation of the exhibition that focuses on Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy (1900-1989).

 

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fuzzy dark spot hamburg

Sammlung Falckenberg

Deichtorhallen Hamburg

13.04 – 03.11.2019

 

Exhibition with :

Vito Acconci, Gabor Altorjay, John Bock, Claus Böhmler, Öyvind Fahlström, Harun Farocki, Jeanne Faust, Lee Friedlander, Gintersdorfer/Klaßen, Rosanna Graf, Britta Gröne/Peter Piller, Romeo Grünfelder, Christian Jankowski, Volko Kamensky, Naho Kawabe, Mike Kelley, Jon Kessler, Nina Könnemann, Till Krause, Vlado Kristl, Lene Markusen, Paul McCarthy, Aurelia Mihai, Ernst Mitzka, Vanessa Nica Mueller, Karina Nimmerfall, Wolfgang Oelze, Tony Oursler, Nam June Paik, Stefan Panhans Rotraut Pape/Raskin, reproducts, Rainer Korsen/Gerd Roscher, Oliver Ross, Gerhard Rühm, Swen Erik Scheuerling, Corinna Schnitt, Paul Spengemann, Hans Stützer, Mike Mandel/Larry Sultan, Inga Svala Thorsdottir, Helena Wittmann, Steffen Zillig

 

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Teresa Solar

Madrid, 1985

Lives and works in Madrid

 

 

Teresa Solar’s work focus on heterogeneous practices that materialize in audiovisual and sculptural works, in which the languages ​​of the two disciplines connect and interact. However, in recent years, her artistic practice has opted more for drawing and sculpture, with materials such as ceramics or clay, which have been used, since the beginning of humanity and until today, for their insulation properties, resistance and hardness.

 

Based on these elements, Teresa Solar’s work delves into the autobiography, alluding to the daily trips through the subsoil in the Madrid metro or injuries to her own body, to the concern for speech and the organs of phonation, and, at the same time, she reflects on wide-ranging themes, for example related to zoology, geology or space exploration.

 

Along with her interest in the materiality of clay and earth, another figurative language appears in Teresa Solar’s work that moves between the detail of scientific illustrations and the pedagogical representations of Natural History museums, and the brilliant coloring of the fairground attractions, which have resulted in works such as Cabalga, Cabalga, Cabalga or Flotation Line. These are large sculpture installations, which form families with pieces of different sizes, some of them monumental. At the same time, Teresa Solar is an avid sketcher who works with this technique to express her emotions more directly.

 

Lola Lasurt

Barcelona, 1983

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

Lola Lasurt’s artistic activity focuses on painting and video and many times also on collaborative processes that confer a universal projection, to her works of a more personal character.

 

The project about the ‘des-time’ can be understood as the analysis and the questioning of a time period, previous to hers. This is one of the main axis of her work, that frequently uses as a starting point elements from the material and aesthetic culture, that reveal behavioral patterns and ideological parameters of a determined era.  

 

Her pieces revolve around the themes of the memory and the oblivion, the nostalgia and the amnesiac need. Lola Lasurt is interested in the historical individual time and its relationship with the guidelines of the hegemonic culture and the construction of collective symbols.

Alicia Kopf

Girona, 1982

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

 

From the exercise of drawing and writing, Alicia Kopf reflects on apparently individual issues that have become generational concerns.

 

The expressive dimension of her work is related to her studies in Fine Arts and Comparative Literature, studies that allow her to get closer to subjects as diverse as poor housing or the epic of polar exploration from a position that combines both awe and ironic distance.

 

Alicia Kopf’s work arises from a metaphor, which allows her to perform an analytic exercise that will finally lead to different associations. Thus, in her project Articantàrtic, from the appropriation and the reshaping of graphical and narrative documents, Alicia Kopf turns a historical account into a first person narrative concerning resistance, obsession and the idea of conquest.

Carles Congost

Olot, 1970

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

 

Carles Congost’s work revolves around the construction of personality and the behaviour codes and it is noted by the redevelopment of cinematographic, photographic and musical stereotypes. His work is developed in a harmonic way along with different disciplines –photographs, videos, sound and drawing- incorporating at the same time a classical and ironical treatment to the image.

 

The art world constitutes one of the themes that Congost has incorporated to his recent work, from the theatrical stagings that question the mechanisms, to the dynamics and stereotypes of the art world itself.

Cabello/Carceller

Helena Cabello (Paris, 1963) and Ana Carceller (Madrid, 1964)

Live and work in Madrid

 

 

Cabello/Carceller’s work is set in a territory from which they question, reflect and/or fracture the roles or stereotypes associated to gender. They understand identity as something built in conflict or in consonance with a social, cultural, political and economic environment. They point at an `I´ that is always found according to the `others´, this idea vertebrates their production.

 

In their works the patterns, which are linked in a static way to either masculine or feminine roles, are revised. In this way, images are subverted in their works along with behavioral codes and attitudes, associated to that which is commonly considered as masculine or feminine.

 

The rereading that Cabello/Carceller’s work forms in the mentioned models, position the spectator facing multiple prejudice, assumed values and contradictions that manage to effectively destabilize a univocal vision of reality.

Perejaume

Sant Pol de Mar, 1957

Lives and works in Sant Pol de Mar

 

 

Perejaume started to exhibit his work during the late seventies and since then he has been developing it in parallel, either in visual disciplines or in literary extension.

 

The landscape is a recurring subject analyzed and explored in his work, retaking and reevaluating the presence it has had most of all, in its literary and visual production. Through this approach, his relationship with the landscape is examined from diverse points of view none of which are exempt of irony. Points of view that are shaped through painting, sculpture, photography, installations, video or the intervention on the natural environment itself.

 

For Perejaume, man is part of the landscape, he isn’t an outsider to it and he is yet another agent in its conformation and evolution, as if the geologic time would have been accelerated.

Javier Peñafiel

Zaragoza, 1964

Lives and works in Mallorca

 

 

Javier Peñafiel’s work, drawings, videos, texts and sculptures make up a linguistic system parallel to a reality to which he is unconnected.

 

All through his career, Javier Peñafiel has built up a universe inhabited by characters; by sentences that work autonomously, such as phrases that have the duty to bother the quiet and routine based use of the language by the spectator; or videos where diverse elements are combined in the shape of tableaux, sharing a space but keeping at the same time their identity separate.

 

The works of Javier Peñafiel show the necessity and the difficulty in direct communication. His works investigate the double identity – as obstacle and as a bridge- that the language represents in such communication.

Fernando Prats

Santiago de Chile, 1967

Lives and works in Barcelona

 

 

In his work Fernando Prats “paints” or, we’d rather say, recreates nature; he deals with registering tracks, making the invisible visible, giving voice and image to what was present but kept unnoticed.

 

Using seismographs, traces, photographs, videos… he registers the beat of different realities on smoked supports, from the flight of birds to the wild jet of a geyser, the deep coal of mines or the powerful waves that break against the cliff. Thus, Fernando Prats holds an unorthodox relationship with painting, both for the choice of his instruments and for the intervention of chance.

 

His work is formalized in actions which himself registers, that show the creative processes intrinsic to his work. Fernando Prats paintings are time-objects, as they condense in their finished form a story, the one of its creation, whose times often have nothing to do with the ones of the artist, but with the natural rhythms.

Julião Sarmento

Lisbon, 1948- Estoril, 2021

 

 

From the early seventies, Julião Sarmento has explored the possibilities of painting, photography, sculpture, installation and video. There is a process of suggestive hiding in his works that situates the spectator not only as an observer but also as a participant of his narrative.

 

The woman is a recurring motive in his works and from it he elaborates concepts linked to sexuality, desire or seduction. The relationships he evokes, on latent tension, violence, obsession or mystery, are obtained from a meticulous dynamic between the participating agents in the physical space, in the case of installations, or in the edition, in case of films and videos. The resulting works unleash all the detached intrigue of the images in constant suspense and tension.

Following a line of long-haul research about the relevance of producing artworks, Perejaume proposes a minimalist experiment, with two new works.

 

Throughout his artistic production, Perejaume has always questioned the space devoted to works of art. The space, understood as a physical place, such as outer space or place of exhibition –gallery, museum- but also the mental space. To make room for artworks also refers to a temporary notion: how much time do we dedicate to see the works? What place do they have in our lives?

 

The exhibition can be seen as an intimate and theatrical representation in two times.

 

The anteroom, with dark walls, introduces us to the gallery with the phrase: Don’t you think that artworks are starting to be as valuable as the space they occupy? There are so many works; can’t you hear them repeatedly saying to their visitors and to their makers: “We don’t fit, please make more room for us”?

 

The first room is dedicated to a single photograph in black and white, made from the exposure of 140 still frames from the film “El Ball de l’Espolsada”, which was filmed in 1902. The film was commissioned to Napoleón studio in Barcelona when, in the early twentieth century, this popular dance was recovered after fifty years in oblivion. The restoration of this material allowed to rediscover the original choreography. The film, which is one of the oldest footage of Catalonia, belongs to the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona and is deposited at the Filmoteca de la Generalitat de Catalunya.

 

In the second room, we found an imposing movie projector that presents the film Projecció cinematogràfica del llegat Cambó. Cambó’s legacy is a collection of fifty two paintings by European masters from the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries (Veronese, Tintoretto, El Greco, Rubens, Metsys, Gainsborough, Le Brun, Goya, Fragonard, Quentin de la Tour, Lucas Cranach, Tiepolo…). It is the selfless contribution of more value that MNAC has received and it comes from the political and patron Francesc Cambó (1876-1947). In the projection, the legacy is flowing rapidly as a chromatic flare.

 

 

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Perejaume (Sant Pol de Mar, 1957) has received awards such as Premio Nacional de Arte Gráfico de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes, Premio de Artes Plásticas del Ministerio de Cultura and Premi Nacional d’Arts Visuals de la Generalitat de Catalunya. He has recently curated the exhibition Maniobra de Perejaume at Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona. He has shown his works in exhibitions such as ¡Ay Perejaume, si vieras la acumulación de obras que te rodea, no harías ninguna más!, La Pedrera, Barcelona; Imágenes proyectadas, CAB Centro de Arte Caja Burgos, Burgos; Amidament de Joan Coromines, Es Baluard, Palma de Mallorca, La Pedrera, Barcelona; Retrotabula, Palacio de los Condes de Gabia, Granada, Artium Vitoria. He has participated in internationals biennials such as Prospect 1 New Orleans (2008), Art Unlimited, Basel (2006), 51st Venice Biennale (2005). He has recently published Mareperlers i Ovaladors, Edicions 62, Barcelona (2014) and Paraules Locals, Tushita edicions, Barcelona (2015).

solid surface, 2015

 

Galeria Joan Prats is pleased to present solid surface the first exhibition of Annika Kahrs in Barcelona, which brings together her most recent video works.

 

Annika Kahrs primarily works with film, performance and photography. She is interested in both social and scientific constructs, as well as evolved organic relations such as those between humans and animals. In her work Annika Kahrs examines representation and interpretation. Her films oscillate between obvious staging and documentary-like observation; a distinctive implication in Kahrs’ videos is that she never hides herself in the film, even if her presence is only unveiled in a short glance from an actor to the director, it reveals a singular approach to her environment almost guided by a mathematical process.

 

Annika Kahrs presents solid surface, with hills, valleys, craters and other topographic features, primarily made of ice – her latest video work about the dwarf planet Pluto. This film is set in a planetarium with a projected starry sky, where in the centre a round spot of light is located, invariably suggesting the moon. After watching carefully, the celestial body appears to be a spotlight that detects this nocturnal illusion and reveals the white projection screen. In this work, the artist resorted to imaginative as well as narrative devices to paint a portrait of Pluto, as our vision of it seems destined to change soon: a NASA mission will reach its orbit and, for the first time ever, close-up photographs will be taken of it. So far, even scientific illustrations of the planet have been based on speculation, and this imminent shift from imagined picture to actual depiction, according to Kahrs, is why Pluto became the ideal protagonist for her work.

 

The relationship between fiction and reality also plays a role in the video Sunset-Sunrise. In this film the viewer understands that he or she is observing a sunset: the star glowing red on the horizon. Gradually the picture lightens, a glistening veil moves across the picture from below, finally the projection is pure white. The riddle unravels itself as the camera moves backwards, disclosing that we are in a lecture theatre. We are not the witnesses of a strange natural spectacle, but rather just viewers of a projected sunset that is slowly dissolved in real sunlight, as the blinds in the room are raised.

 

In études cliniques ou artistiques, Annika Kahrs films a woman, who adopts body positions that seem to be gymnastic exercises or yoga postures. It is the artist herself who is giving the performer the precise instructions according to photographs from the Parisian psychiatric hospital, la Salpêtrière, showing the poses of the ‘major hysterical seizures’, a term coined by Charcot. In this film Annika Kahrs deconstructs not only the male gaze, but also, she unmasks photography as a staged medium in terms of documentation.

 

 

Annika Kahrs (Achim, Germany, 1984) lives and works in Hamburg. She has been awarded a number of prizes and scholarships including 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 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). She will participate in the 5th Tessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art next June.