EN /
„Tokyo Morandi“ is an exhibition project that allows the participating artists, by examining varying approaches in differing media, to probe the only indirect knowability of emotions, cognitive information and rational processes in humans, and to explore this in the context of space, object and installation.
„Tokyo Morandi“ scrutinizes the compexity of various disciplines, methods and procedures to pose questions on storage, combination and retrievability of sensual as well as rational content. How can a space become a walkable (stage)setting; how can film, dance, music and installation achieve a coherent unity, that fathoms the interplay of alienation and appropriation techniques in the shape of repetition.
A focus point for all the works on display is the art of italian painter Giorgio Morandi, a life-long maker of still lifes, placing repetititon at the centre of his art, with his variations of ever the same and numberless arrangements of empty bottles and vessels. This repetition of his painted „empty“ objects fills them with questions of perception: By what relation between each other do they create their meaning, their form? What are the „internal“ correlations of reality? How is the artist’s eye connected to the sensation of the viewer?
Repetition and abstraction, ecstasy and cognition are terms to be thought of as being closely connected. Repetition leads to the disciplinary and formal in terms of a reduction, while at the same time repetition becomes a heightened subjective sensation of „Joie de Vivre“ and a state of awaking and recognition, as is often described for music, and that also figures in discussions on the perception of imagery in Cézanne and Matisse. This „awakening“ can cause, as in the works of Johan Lurf, Sophie Trudeau and Michaela Gill, an intoxication, a state of ecstasy, in which a human can dissolve or can become someone else.
A unique aspect of the exhibition that opens on May 9 at Meinblau project space is the selection of artists from Berlin and Montreal. Musicians such as Sophie Trudeau, Mauro Pezzente and Mike Moya of Canadian post-rock collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor will premier works developed within the thematic context of the exhibition, which will in co-operation with Kimberley de Jong’s dance performance and films by Karl Lemieux and Philippe Leonard, display their discrete and electrifying imagery, that also characterizes Gambeltron’s and Nick Kuepfer’s site-specific contributions to the exhibition. Performance pieces and the overall connection of the entire installation will merge the various artist positions for the exhibition’s duration.
A closing event co-hosted by Arkaoda Club takes place on May 13 with an afternoon concert by Gambeltron, Nick Kuepfer, Mike Moya, Etkin Cekin and Niklas Kraft, with DJ sets from Fog Puma and Eli Pavel.
Text: Falko McKenna, Maria Hinze
Translation: Falko Teichmann