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until 29.05. | #0485ARTatBerlin | The Gallery at Körnerpark (Galerie im Körnerpark) shows from the 09th April 2016 the group exhibition GRABEN GRABEN.
When Franz Körner dug out the gravel quarry that would later become Körner Park, the excavations unearthed surprising artifacts. But how do excavations guided by economic interests change their surroundings?
The project GRABEN GRABEN (DIGGING DIGGING) introduces artistic positions addressing landscape transformation and deformation as well as urban changes through the extraction and exploitation of raw materials. The exhibit approaches this global topic from many different perspectives.
Rural and urban transformations through raw materials extraction and recultivation play a central role in the work of Roswitha von den Driesch and Jens-Uwe Dyffort. Their video and sound installation “Goliath” shows drastic cityscape changes in times of industrial boom, structural transition, and economic recession. In “Revier” (Mining Area or Stomping Ground), two photo-collage animations set to sound explore these transformations in different coal mining regions of Germany and the dried up Owens Lake (California, USA).
Shlomit Bauman’s ceramic works in “Run Out” spotlight a resource that has been exhausted: the artist casts her objects in the last available clay from a now depleted mine, highlighting the finite nature of our reserves and the irreversibility of consumption and waste. Sven Kalden likewise focuses on global resource extraction. His sculptures “Füllhorn I / II” (Cornucopia I / II) incorporate the concave forms of common mining structures and reduce them to progressively tapered, spiraling funnels. The cornucopia image references an old narrative of Western industrial growth ideology trumpeting a never-ending supply of electricity and raw materials.
Oliver van den Berg’s expansive installation “Tanke / Gas Station” depicts the base of a gas station on a wide layer of asphalt, but the gas pump is missing. The pedestal construction points downward – to the earth’s core. The work on the wall, “Agip,” reproduces the firm’s logo in asphalt with certain modifications to the mythical creature. Inken Reinert’s “Grüße aus…” (Greetings from…) draws on postcards of the 1970s from mining regions in East and West Germany. The ideological intentions of the postcards provide surprising perspectives and motifs. Hendrik Lietmann’s photo series “Rohrgebiet” (Pipeline Valley) documents the powerful pipeline systems running throughout the entire Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr Valley). They evoke a time when this was an active mining region, and have become familiar elements in the area’s urban and rural landscapes.
“Cargo,” by Anna Lena Grau, centers on a 14th-century transportation system that carried glass and metal across the sea as bars, to be fashioned into their final forms as objects for everyday use only after arriving at their final destinations. A shipwreck preserved a load of bars in their transitory form at the bottom of the sea, and the artist has cast them anew in everyday plastic materials. Ingeborg Lockemann’s project “Barracuda” revolves around a hard drive acquired at the landfill for electronic waste in Agbogbloshie/Accra, a “final stop” for computers worldwide. The piece returns to the beginning of the hard drive’s production, examining its chemical components and their places of extraction.
“Hunting and Collecting,” Sammy Baloji’s continually expanding artistic research project, investigates modes of economic exploitation in the Congo as well as their forms of visual representation. The part presented here, “Katanga soils” (a cooperation with Chrispin Mwano and Lotte Arndt), focuses on mining and its effects on local living conditions from the colonial period until today.
This project received support from the Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs.
Program of Events:
Lecture with Discussion
Sunday, April 10, 2016, 12 a.m.
“Ran out” – About the extinction of natural, cultural and personal resources” Lecture by Slomit Bauman
Filmscreening and Talk
Sunday, April 24, 5 p.m.
Filmscreening of Bianca Bodau’s film “Our Lady on the Rocks”
Artist Talk
Sunday, May 22, 5 p.m.
Tour in the exhibition and talk with the artists, moderated by Dorothee Bienert
Book Presentation
Thursday, May 26, 7 p.m.
Sammy Baloji and Lotte Arndt present the recently published book “Sammy Baloji. Hunting & Collecting”.
Guided tours: Every Sunday, 3 p.m.
Opening: Friday, 8th April 2016, 06:00 p.m.
Exhibition period: Saturday, 9th April to Sunday, 29th May 2016
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Image caption: Sven Kalden, Fullhorn I/II, 2011/13, Skulptur
Exhibition GRABEN GRABEN – Galerie im Körnerpark – Kunst in Berlin ART at Berlin
We thank the gallery Kuckei + Kuckei, that represents the artist Oliver Oliver van den Berg, for sending the information!
