Benedikt Braun | SHOOTING STAR | EIGENHEIM Berlin | 11.01.–09.02.2019

until 09.02. | #2320ARTatBerlin | EIGENHEIM Berlin presents from 11th January 2019 the exhibition SHOOTING STAR by the artist Benedikt Braun in a solo show. Accompanying the exhibition, works by the artist Lars Wild will be shown in the newly created Salon of the Galerie Eigenheim.

Benedikt Braun chooses this time the high drama of shooting, with specially constructed shooting machines. In his solo exhibition Shooting Star, gallery visitors find themselves in the midst of a projectile drama, whether as witnesses or perpetrators. The process of shooting involves a lot: the shooter, the target, the weapon, the reason and the consequences. Benedikt Braun’s artistic work is known for leading viewers to places where it secretly becomes so interesting that it hurts: with verve to the edges and into the taboo zones of society. This exhibition ends on 09.02.2019.

Poster “SHOOTING STAR” with clay pigeon throwing machine in front of the throwing wall
as part of an interactive artwork by Benedikt Braun

Benedikt Braun SHOOTING STAR
Accept the automatic object – close your hand around the object – find the right posture – set the direction – aim for the target – and now pull the trigger; then the bang and shortly afterwards the silence. Directly or gradually, the consequences become clearer and clearer.

Benedikt Braun

This dramaturgy can make you dependent, both as an active performer and as a passive witness – Bang! Bang! The climax of control, exercise of power, violence, loss of control and inescapable consequence is also very characteristic of being together humanely and has shaped people and their history(s) considerably. It is already clear to every reader what this is all about. Yes, it is about the shot. And this process includes a lot: the shooter, the target, the weapon, the reason and the consequences.

 
Benedikt Braun – Münzgewehr (coin gun)

Benedikt Braun’s artistic work is known for leading viewers to places where it secretly becomes so interesting that it hurts: with verve to the margins and into the taboo zones of society. Areas that are mostly overlooked or repressed with emphasis, i.e. eccentric to forbidden sexual practices, politics without morality, making money without inhibitions and lower class habitus up to the pain threshold of every*n educational citizen*in (pc). There you stand, sword-bearing on a bouquet full of puns, a messy portion of wit and countless associations. And now shots are fired. Yes, this time Benedikt Braun chooses the high drama of shooting, with specially constructed shooting machines, triggered by the visitors and the artist himself. In the new solo exhibition SHOOTING STAR, gallery visitors find themselves in the midst of a projectile drama, whether as witnesses or perpetrators, but never as victims.

 

Benedikt Braun – Nightshot

The process of shooting has always inspired creative people to artistic expression through its dramatic brilliance and fateful heaviness. From hunting scenes with arrows and bows in the cave paintings near Valencia, the depictions of archers on chariots in ancient Egypt and Assyria, to figures armed with arrows and bows on Greek pottery, to numerous battle paintings in oil, to Francisco de Goya’s monumental work The Shooting of the Insurgents (1814) in the dawning Modern Age, the motifs of the shot can be traced throughout the history of art.

This development also continued in the last century, especially in the field of photojournalism, where some photographs from the severe hotbeds of conflict of the 20th century have literally become globally effective pictorial icons. For example, Robert Capa’s Loyalist soldier from the Spanish Civil War at the moment of his death (1936) or the spontaneous execution of a Vietcong by the Chief of Police of Saigon, recorded by Eddie Adams (1968) in the Vietnam War, have left their mark on the memory of generations, changed the public perception of the war, and also influenced the collective afterimage of these wars. In the post-war period, artists* such as Niki Saint Phalle with her Shooting Pictures, Chris Burden as a self-shot artist in Shoot (1971), Marina Abramovic and Ulay with a tense bow in Rest Energy (1980), Anish Kapoor with the work Shooting the Corner (2008- 2009), Douglas Gordon with In the Stillness (2013) or Nasan Tur with First Shot (2014) also continued the cultural discourse on the phenomenon into the present day.

Flyer “SHOOTING STAR” with crushed clay pigeons
as part of an interactive artwork by Benedikt Braun

Benedikt Braun now goes directly back to the zero point of the action in his solo exhibition Shooting Star. The installations shown at EIGENHEIM Berlin are not representations of a shooting process, in whatever medium. No, the installations are the sharp firing systems themselves. These are loaded and triggered live. In operation, they show real variants of the shot, each installation its own variant, directly on site in the gallery rooms. In the end, various types of projectiles fly through the exhibition. The mechanics, the pressure, the noise and the energy are communicated unaltered and unfiltered.

The second main aspect of the exhibition is the objects that are exposed to fire. What can one do and how and for how long should one bombard anything at all? How do the impacts affect the appearance and texture of the objects hit? How much more do they communicate about what is happening? Is there even an aesthetic attraction in the authenticity of the damage in the things hit? So does being damaged guarantee a specific form of uniqueness, a special beauty? Because the impact of the damage cannot be repeated, therefore the hit is afterwards under guarantee unique. The objects hit are also exhibited. In this way, the viewer immediately experiences both: the action and its results. And possibly the fascination of the whole. In a sense, it is precisely in these clear experimental arrangements that the circle closes. Benedikt Braun reduces the shot phenomenon back to the essentials, which alone will take the participants to their limits. Art and reality coincide now and here, or they meet directly in the bang.

 

Lars Wild GOLDLAUTER

The exhibition GOLDLAUTER by the artist Lars Wild will also be shown in the newly created Salon of the Galerie Eigenheim Berlin. Goldlauter – a secluded resort at the foot of the Great Beerberg, on the southern slope of the scenic Thuringian Forest, is in this case not only the location of the origin of this series, but also a metaphor for a place of retreat and contemplation, spiritual purification and oblivion of the world.

Poster GOLDLAUTER for the exhibition of Lars Wild

The gloomy landscapes balance between the fateful impact of a comet or the crash of an airship and the idyllic peace of a lake landscape or an abandoned holiday resort. The scenes, however, are not borrowed from a real existing model, but originate solely from the painter’s imagination. Above all, there seems to be a serious question of existence. Mystically dark, dream-like states are depicted and cast a spell over the viewer. This exhibition ends on 27.02.2019.

Flyer GOLDLAUTER for the exhibition of Lars Wild

Vernissage for oth exhibitions: Friday, 11th January 2019, 7:00 – 10:00 p.m.

Exhibition period: Friday, 11th January to Saturday, 9th February 2019 (Benedikt Braun) and to Wednesday, 27th February (Lars Wild)

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Exhibition Benedikt Braun – SHOOTING STAR – EIGENHEIM Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin