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until 17.01. | #4544ARTatBerlin | Galerie Esther Schipper currently shows the exhibition Europe Endless by the artist Christopher Roth.
Esther Schipper is pleased to announce Europe Endless, a presentation by Christopher Roth with Materials, Trailers, Out-Takes.
Christopher Roth’s presentation takes place on occasion of his forthcoming trilogy of films exploring the history of geographical and philosophical borderlands, family and friendship and the future. Setting the scene with sculptures of over dimensional bags of French Fries and a colorized edition of English PEL chairs (redesigned by Jasper Morrison for TYP) as a make-shift cinema, the presentation addresses Europe as a constantly moving target. The daytime opening in the gallery will feature a reading by Lukas Kubina from his new novel Boludo, followed in the evening by a concert by Macedoniasintetica (Carlo Camerin, Mattia Rigon, Simone Carraro) and a screening of Metagoon 24h by Matteo Stocco and Matteo Primiterra.
At the gallery a selection of materials and out-takes from the films will be screened. Roth’s trilogy—The Spectre of Eurocommunism, Infinite Histories, Look! We have come through! —is in the tradition of the essay film, weaving found footage, documentary and interviews to construct competing histories of Europe through personal stories, political ideas and the history of film. In recent years, Roth has developed his own style in this type of film, using writing, music and fictional elements to exaggerate things in order to create tension and new contexts.
Exhibition view: Christopher Roth, Europe Endless: Materials, Trailers, Out-Takes, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2024, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul,Photo: © Andrea Rossetti.
The first film, The Spectre of Eurocommunism, reflects on the 1970s taking as its central nexus the life and work of Roth’s friend Colin MacCabe. The second, Infinite Histories, focuses on the end of the 1980s, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communist states in Eastern Europe told from the perspective of Lea Ypi, an acclaimed Albanian-British philosopher and political scientist, and Oana Bogdan, a Brussels-based Romanian architect and short-time secretary of state in Bucharest. With its shift into the year 2038, the third film alludes to Roth’s project for the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennial. In this film a series of never completely specified events have dramatically altered history, so that society has learned to harness the tremendous potential of immigration, to invent new forms of participatory politics, and to claim Europe as “Utopia, Newropa, Eutopia…” A new cast of younger thinkers and activists, such as the ‘digital Marx’ Evgeny Morozov from Belarus, the Italian economist and urban thinker Francesca Bria, the Swedish philosopher Martin Hägglund, and the British artist-activists Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn, provide new and optimistic perspectives, while participants in the earlier films make briefer appearances.
The sculptures on view, brightly colored overdimensional felt bags with large pieces of drift wood doubling as French fries, are a humorous nod to the idea of Europe Roth brings to his films. Each bag a different color, with the term French Fries in other European languages, the work draws on a communality alongside the differences. In addition, the work draws on an experience that imagines a world outside of the capitalist market economy: seeing toy-look-a-likes of bags of fries outside of a school in his Venice neighborhood, Roth was told by the young children they would only accept barter in exchange, no currency. The playful understanding of an exchange economy and the communality of the dish across Europe is a witty, lighthearted take on an ideal of Europe, and indirectly invokes the history of Marxist thought told in the new films.
Exhibition view: Christopher Roth, Europe Endless: Materials, Trailers, Out-Takes, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2024, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul,Photo: © Andrea Rossetti.
Christopher Roth was born in Munich, Germany. He lives and works in Berlin and Venice.
Christopher Roth’s practice may be best understood as a kind of proactive intellectual scholarship that combines the factual and fictitious, with both analytic and poetic qualities. Roth’s work seeks to understand how information, words, pictures and ideas are received, travel and are mediated at a constantly accelerating pace. Since the 1990s, Roth has focused on the “emptiness” of single images and certain generic imagery that surround us. These images only accrue meaning in context—a function easily manipulated by the mass media. This knowledge — acquired and practiced as an accomplished film editor and director of feature films and given theoretical underpinnings by his engagement with cultural history and philosophy—informs his entire practice.
Roth’s film Baader was awarded in the Silver Bear category at the 2002 Berlinale and was restored in 2023.
Selected projects include: So Long Daddy, See You in Hell premiered at the Munich Film Festival 2022 and ran in competition in Tallinn. Roth was one of the curators of the German pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. He made with Brandlhuber+: The Property Drama (Chicago Biennial 2017), Legislating Architecture (Venice Biennale, 2016),and Architecting after Politics (AUT Tirol, vai) and with Colin MacCabe and Tilda Swinton The Seasons in Quincy, Four Portraits of John Berger (Berlinale, 2016). In 2018, Roth launched space-time.tv – a cooperative television platform that now has four channels. Currently he is a visiting professor at the Hong Kong University and shoots a film about the architect John Lin all over China.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, December 14, 2024 – Friday, January 17, 2025.
Image caption: Exhibition view: Christopher Roth, Europe Endless: Materials, Trailers, Out-Takes, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2024, Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/ Paris/Seoul,Photo: © Andrea Rossetti.
Exhibition Christopher Roth – Esther Schipper | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
