English
Deutsch
until 15.08. | #0124ARTatBerlin | Between 7th july and 15th august 2015 gallery neugerriemschneider shows the exhibition “E.F.A. im Garten” by Antje Majewski.
For her newest works, Antje Majewski has found inspiration in the construction site just a stone’s throw from her apartment in Berlin-Wedding. For forty years, community gardeners have planted fruits, vegetables, and flowers on this land, which until now has been owned by the German railway company. Recently sold to an investor, these gardens have since been dug up in order to make way for a large-scale self-storage facility. Although now uncultivated, shrubs, lily of the valley, small maple trees, and sorrel from the former garden have taken temporary
root in the land, spreading from the scars of excavation and turning a vacant lot in the middle of the city into an autonomous ecosystem.
As the grounds continued to be cleared, the scattered remains of the former garden’s structures fell to form aconstellation of ephemeral sculptures which Majewski has immortalized in photographs to be presented in the gallery. In addition to creating these photographic works, Majewski also collected select pieces of the demolished wooden cabins. Bringing these into her studio, the artist created sculptures possessing unique pictoral qualities and painted them with nature-based encaustic colors – soot black, gold ochre, malachite, jade, lapis lazuli, madder
lake, and crimson red that have been extracted from soil, semi-precious stones, sea snails, and plants for centuries.
For these sculptures and a large-format painting of the excavated land, Majewski employs variations on the green, violet, and black color scheme that has been adopted for the symbol of the artist’s activist organization E.F.A. (Eco-Feminist Anarchism). By juxtaposing her photographs of the lot with sculptures and painted memories, Antje Majewski conflates space and time to create a complex site of memorial and silent protest.
In recent years, Antje Majewski’s works have been featured in numerous international solo and group exhibitions. Among these were shows at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź and the Heidelberger Kunstverein (both 2014) as well as at Villa Romana in Florence (2012) and Kunsthaus Graz (2011). Majewski’s exhibition project Apple. An Introduction.
(Over and Over again) will be on view at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany from July 12, 2015. First shown at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, the exhibition comprises images showing nearly-extinct apple varieties that stylistically recall the tradition of classic still life painting. These are presented alongside Majewski’s documentary work Freedom of Apples. In this film, the artist conducts a case study on biodiversity, highlighting the complex relationship between global agriculture and technological advances. On the occasion of the exhibition,
as also done in Łódź, the artist will invite ecological activists and community groups to plant 100 apple trees throughout the city of Mönchengladbach.
The artist was a founding member of the network ƒƒ and has co-curated three iterations of Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ 1-3) since 2011. This project has developed from a collaborative, anarchistic, and feminist dialogue lead by the E.F.A. and supplemented by ecological theory.
Antje Majewski and neugerriemschneider invite you to visit the site in Berlin-Wedding at 11am, directly preceding the exhibition’s opening. The lot is located across from Lynarstraße 7, 13353 Berlin, in close proximity to the Wedding subway and rail station. This visit will be followed by the exhibition’s opening in the gallery from 12-4pm.
Vernissage: Sunday, 5th july, 12 a.m. – 4 p.m. (at 11 a.m. there will be a guided visit to the artist’s place of inspiration in Berin-Wedding)
Exhibition period: Tuesday, 7th july – Saturday, 15th August
[maxbutton id=”78″]
Antje Majewski – neugerriemschneider – Art in Berlin ART@Berlin
