11 December 2008
Je suis l’espace où je suis
I am the space where I am
Ich bin der Raum, in dem ich bin
The Berlin Office holds various functions as a space. It is first and foremost a shelter, offering an apartment for the duration of their residency. It is also a studio, providing space for projects to be developed and realised. Every artist in this exhibition has spent a period of time in the apartment; either as a visitor or as a resident themselves.
The Berlin Office is not a white cube. Artists were invited to use any available space for their installations. Holland’s Untitled (Front Three) is the first work that the spectator can encounter. Using the unusual two-way security spy hole on the apartment’s front door, she constructs an illusion that questions our expectations of what the framework of an exhibition space should be.
Di Lecce chooses to use the kitchen to construct for his installation Non ti Scordar di Me, which seemingly cuts the room in half; creating a visible plane that invites visitors to perceive and negotiate the space in an unconventional way. Meanwhile, Le Ruez selects the storage space above the hallway as a point of departure for his film, relating notions of memory and experience to the very place in which remnants of the past are stored.
The central concern of the exhibition is the relationship between the confines of this domestic space and the process of living and working within it. The installed works respond directly to the architecture and functional properties of the apartment; examining how a site, with its domestic history and context, resonates as a framework for a collection of artistic responses.
All Photographs are taken by Victoria Lucas or Elly Clarke.
Jacob Borges, Quote remake - Artists regard people, 2008. Vinyl Text
“I have never read any books by Jacquelyn Mitchard. This is the chain of thoughts that led my to the quote from her best-selling novel The Deep End of the Ocean, which was the first selection for Oprah's Book Club. The Berlin office – Temporary Home – Domestic Situations – Domestication – Pets – Cats.”
Bruno Di Lecce, Non ti scordar di me (Forget-me-not), 2008. Red Scotch Tape Installation
By joining folds of space, red Scotch tape draws an outline of an imaginary vertical plane. The minimalist gesture ?becomes an alienating element; presented within a normal everyday space, the work changes our perception of the room and it’s usability.
Flis Holland, Untitled (Front 3) 2008. 35mm Slide, Slide Viewer
Viewed from outside of the apartment through a security spy hole, access to Untitled (Front 3) is obstructed at each stage in the process of reading the image. The wooden joists and paneling suggest the rear of a stage or film set, but there are no clues as to the context of the scene itself.
Sarrita Hunn, 99.1, 2008. Animation (Looped)
Sarrita Hunn investigates visual imagery and the systems through which information is mediated. After mining for underlying structures, she translates information into new analog and digital forms, creating paintings and sculptures that rely on this logic but have incalculable results. 99.1 is the first in a series of nine looping animations entitled 99x9. Starting with a 100-page square sketchbook and a full spectrum of markers, each frame/page is hand-drawn, scanned and reorganized digitally to create a short looping animation. In this manifestation, 99.1 is played on a small hand held media player placed to surprise the viewer with its cinematic simplicity.
Leo
Mother and Infant Found Hanged 2008. Mixed Media
"Police sealed off the mock-Tudor Edwardian house for forensic tests and a solitary officer stood on guard in front of its new wrought iron and gilt gates."
Nest 2008. Branch, nest
Mark Le Ruez
She does not let you fall to dust 2008. Polaroids
The triptych of three Polaroid’s refers to photography’s ability to maintain a sense of the space and subject matter that it seeks to record. Whilst the pictures embrace a visual rhetoric of decadence and decay, alongside a study of organic colour, at the core of the work lays the recognition that photography, even in the form of the unique imagery produced using Polaroid, charts and preserves in kind that which we would otherwise ultimately lose.
After Alma 2008, Digital Video with Found Footage, 5.15 minutes, looped
Alongside original footage, the video work encompasses imagery derived from Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film Persona. Displayed on a monitor in a space associated with contained storage and the remnants of experience, the piece explores the nature of seminal memory within the context of the continually evolving present.
Victoria Lucas
Heart and Lungs 2008. Digital Video, Plug Socket, Monitor and DVD player, Pillow, Quilt, and Mattress
This site-specific looped film records the movement created by the artist’s heart and lungs, whilst laid still on the bed in The Berlin Office studio.
Living Breathing (Curtains) 2008. Digital Video, Monitor and DVD player, Armchair
This piece extracts a small detail of the surrounding room and brings it in to focus. Situated in a chair by the window, and installed in the same spot in which it was originally filmed, Untitled (Curtain) presents the viewer with a moving image that documents a brief moment in time.
Untitled (Light) 2008. Resin, Moth
As the empty light fitting hangs over the curtain rail, a resin cast represents the spent light bulb that once lit the room, whilst encapsulating the Moth that once danced around it.
The idea that a positively phototactic moth mistakes an artificial light for the moon suggests that for the organism, a room in a house becomes an entire planetary system.
Ryan Thayer, Untitled (White) 2008. Mixed Media
Ryan Thayer’s work ranges from architectural installations to photography and sound sculptures. He explores structures of power and their often-contradictory manifestations in buildings and everyday objects. Untitled (white) is one in a series of sculptures combining and rearranging furniture. The continuous surface of this chair has been extended in every direction with a series of legs to create an object with no clear orientation (top, bottom, front, back); forming an intersection between high design and mass production, between utopian and populist models for living.
Photography by Elly Clarke, taken at the 'I am the Space Where I am' preview on the 12th December 2008.
For more information about the Berlin Office click here.
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