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18/1/2011

Kirk Palmer and Johannes Vogl

Matthew Bown Galerie, Berlin

Matthew Bown Gallery is proud to present two solo shows, by London-based artist Kirk Palmer and by Berlin-based artist Johannes Vogl. In their exhibitions at Matthew Bown Gallery, Palmer and Vogl explore themes of memory. Vogl's transmutations of personal history and Palmer's investigation of political history overlap in the consideration of traumas of the mid-twentieth century, Hiroshima and Nazism.

Kirk Palmer's trilogy of films, Murmur, Hiroshima and Sentinel, examines the ancient belief, landscape and the post-war history of Japan. Murmur is an evocation in filmic language of Shinto or animistic belief. It presents a forest of bamboo trees in the hills around Kyoto: swaying in the wind, the trees seem almost to have acquired a personality. Hiroshima is a movie constructed from static shots of the city today. It addresses, in Palmer's words, the way in which the A-bomb blast of 1945 is "receding from view", not only in terms of the physical traces that remain but also in the consciousness of Hiroshima's inhabitants.

The themes of Murmur and Hiroshima merge in the third film, Sentinel, which explores the small mountainous island of Yakushima. It is a place of enormous biological diversity, a World Heritage Site and the home of cryptomeria trees that are thousands of years old. On August 9th 1945 the sky above Yakushima was the rendezvous for the B-29 bomber Bock's Car on a mission to drop the second atomic bomb on Japan. Complications meant that Bock's Car had to circle the island for forty minutes: this delay spared the city of Kokura – the primary target – and sealed the fate of Nagasaki.

Johannes Vogl brings real-world objects, functions and accidents into the gallery space. His transformations often have a narrative, even a performative aspect. Untitled (Grandma) is the reconstruction of a found object, or more precisely of a found event: a collapsed old wooden shelf-unit, including the glass jars full of fruit preserves that once stood on it. Untitled (Pitchfork) is a beech branch to whose extremities pitchfork-tines have been attached to form feet, creating a surreal figure. The Night is the projection of a small disc of light which moves gradually in an arc across the wall. Albert presents two versions of an old photograph of a family member, taken when he was a boy. In the first photograph, he wears a uniform of the Nazi era. In the second, in order to make the photo fit for display after the war, the uniform has been painted over by a sailor costume.

Opening Wednesday 19 Jenuary 11, 18-20.45

Matthew Bown Galerie
Keithstraße 10, Berlin
Open 12-6, Tuesday-Saturday, during exhibitions
free admission

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