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until 20.10. | #4084ARTatBerlin | neugerriemschneider presents from 18. November 2023 the exhibition “A forgotten kingdom, remembered” of artist Mike Nelson. It is the third solo exhibition by the artist at the gallery.
Nelson, known for his intricately layered constructions, here returns his installations to their narrative foundations. a forgotten kingdom, remembered follows his far-reaching survey Extinction Beckons at the Hayward Gallery earlier this year, developing upon and beyond its explanatory work descriptions with a collection of new texts by the artist that echo the bodily impacts of his large-scale work. The writings on view become expansive by means of the realms they create within a viewer, with each piece tracing the lineage of a particular sculpture by the artist, implanting itself in memory much like its antecedent. Together they map his practice and the approaches that crucially shape it, communicating the deeply engrained, albeit unseen of significant projects, lending voice with devices previously unexplored.
Throughout his oeuvre Nelson has composed work that, by way of amalgamated objects that have long been cast off and regarded as detritus, uncovers hidden pasts, legacies of trade and industry, and literary genres.
Taking on scales both monumental and intimate, his sculpture derives its anecdotal gravity from the transformation of matter. He compiles disparate elements into structures, altars, likenesses, trophies, apparitions or relics that fade in and out of focus, regularly reverting back to their very materials – each symbolic framework becomes more than its repurposed component parts through Nelson’s hand, their qualities of suggestion everevolving as he adapts, reevaluates and crafts installations anew for their present contexts. This malleability manifests not only physically but psychologically, impacting the body’s understanding of itself within its surroundings and invoking empathetic understanding through the building of worlds.
Writing and making, for Nelson, are often equivalents. In a forgotten kingdom, remembered, short texts in varied form are pinned to wall-mounted noticeboards, their surfaces punctured and scarred with use, bordered by frames truncated as if extracted and preserved behind acrylic glass. Nelson’s pages are rooted in recollection of the works themselves – or of their literary points of reference and of his life at the time of their creation – and see him reflect on each, textually conjuring them in whole or in part, weaving written fictions around absent assemblages. They approach and modify the processes that initially birthed them as if reflected in a distorted mirror, speaking not only of their explicit subjects, but to the plasticity of memory. Nelson’s noticeboards hang at heights determined by the seats that sit opposite them – sculptures in and of themselves – in an invitation to extended viewing. His texts occupy distinct moments and locations, allowing viewers to share the real space of the gallery, but to exist separately within each work’s musings and imaginings.
a forgotten kingdom, remembered grows from the artist’s short story “On Monkeys Without Tails,” published in 2020 as part of the anthology “The New Abject: Tales of Modern Unease.” Set sometime in the future in Nelson’s South London studio, the artist has forsaken sculpture and turned instead to the immaterial language of words – a prophecy now realized through the works on display.
Mike Nelson (b. 1967) has been the subject of solo exhibitions at international museums and institutions
including Hayward Gallery, London (2023); Palazzo dell’Agricoltore, Parma (2021); Tate Britain, London (2019 and 2010); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2016); Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco (2016); Tramway, Glasgow (2014); Kunsthalle Münster, Münster (2014); The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2014); Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2013); Malmö Konsthall, Malmö (2012); and the British Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice (2011).
Location : Linienstraße
Opening : Friday, 17. November 2023, 6pm until 9pm
Exhibition dates : Saturday, 18. November until Samstag, 20. January 2023
To the Gallery
Bildunterschrift Titel: Installation view, Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons, Hayward Gallery, 22 February to 7 May 2023. Photo: Matt Greenwood. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin.
Exhibition Mike Nelson – Galerie neugerriemschneider | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
