A new body of work. Matti Braun's practice operates at the point where fine art, design and craft crossover. His work focuses on networks of individuals and how their activities challenge conventional interpretation.
The Showroom is pleased to announce that it has commissioned German artist
Matti Braun to make a new body of work for presentation at The Showroom
between 26 March and 4 May 2003. While Braun has been involved in high
profile international group and solo projects, this will be his first solo
show in London. His work has been shown in ARS 01, KIASMA, Helsinki, the
Tirana Biennale, Albania, and the Stedelijk Museum's Bureau Amsterdam. Braun
lives and works in Cologne; he is represented by BQ gallery.
Matti Braun's practice operates at the point where fine art, design and
craft crossover. His work focuses on networks of individuals and how their
activities challenge conventional interpretation. Drawing from an eclectic
collection of projects made by these informal and disparate networks over
the last two hundred years, Braun looks at how their activities function on
social and political levels, through their development of art and language.
Braun's most recent project, Bunta Gabo, took as its subject Andreas Juste
who worked in Belgium during the last century. Juste produced a series of
self-published novels, poems, pamphlets and translated works, written
exclusively in Ido, a refined version of the international language,
Esperanto. These works remain out of print, but were they freely available
they would only be understood by a small number of readers. Braun presented
a series of proposed covers for Juste's writings. Drawing a parallel between
the linguistic diversity in the construction of Ido, Braun's covers offer a
cross section of design approaches. These works referenced Braun's
particular interest in how networks of individuals are established and
communicate; in this case the community formed by the disparate global
speakers of Ido.
"Just as Juste's writings form an oblique locus - an obscure point of
intersection between different ways of thinking - so Braun's installations,
with their fractious structures, reflective surfaces and moulded furniture,
are similarly complex. Braun's work does not offer explanations to the
histories that inform them but offer instead a series of loci that
articulate that there are no simple explanations, no simple trajectories
between ideas and actions." Rob Tufnell, Assistant-Curator, Dundee
Contemporary Arts.
Opening 25 March 2003 19.00Â 21.00hrs
26 March  4 May 2003 Wednesday - Sunday 13.00  18.00hrs
For further information please contact either Kirsty Ogg or Andy Marsh on
020 8983 4115.
The Showroom is supported by London Arts. Project supported by the Goethe
Institut, London and IFA.
Mary Jane Aladren, Adelaide Bannerman, Claire Barclay , Iwona Blazwick,
Sarah Carrington, Paul Collett, Peter Cross, Laura Emsley, ezppl, Margot &
Fergus Henderson, Sue Jones, Rose Finn-Kelcey, FlatPack001, Frieze, Simon
Grant, David Gilmour, Ceri Hand, Paul Hobson, Matthew Hunt, Kate MacGarry,
Lynn MacRitchie, Anna Milsom, Dave Muller, Paul Nicholson, Campbell & Mairi
Ogg, Michael O'Pray, Maureen Paley, Julia Peyton-Jones, Alison Raftery,
Simon Starling, David Thorp, Transmission Gallery, Catherine Ugwu and Grant
Watson are all actively supporting the work of the gallery by joining The
Showroom's Friends Scheme.
The Showroom 44 Bonner Road London E2 9JS
T. 020 8983 4115 F. 020 8981 4112
Nearest tube Bethnal Green on Central Line. Buses 26, 48, 55, 106, 253.
Overground to Cambridge Heath.