calendario eventi  :: 

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3/7/2014

Two exhibitions

Johann Konig, Berlin

Tue Greenfort
VIS VITALIS

Johann König, Berlin is delighted to present new works by Tue Greenfort in this, his fifth solo exhibition at the Gallery. The works of the Danish artist have, from the outset, shown an ongoing critical concern for our perception of Nature and for themes such as ecology and the handling of natural resources. Aesthetically straightforward and clear in their forms, the works often reflect complex contexts and connections, based on extensive research into a specific place, a particular material, a real condition. In the current exhibition, Tue Greenfort is concerned, for example, with the notion of VIS VITALIS, the force from which life emerges, or the force of life. The artist himself characterizes the exhibition in the following words:

It is by re-thinking the notion of ‘the environment’ – that abstract, divisive term with which we have become so familiar, a term whose exhausted meaning and lack of critical depth open up a possibility of re-framing the problem – that we can perhaps achieve a fundamental paradigm shift.

“The world population has more than doubled in the past 50 years. Countries throughout the world are now facing the challenge of an increasing demand for food, at a time when our society has become more environmentally conscious. Today fertilizers are playing a critical role in supporting worldwide food production, but the raw materials being used and their manufacturing processes are having a negative impact on our environment. The challenges facing the fertilizer industry are quite complex. What we are seeing is that the agricultural food production systems will be challenged with an increased demand for food, and at the same time there will be a loss of production acreage to urban and industrial development. So the fertilizer industry must find new process technologies for increasing fertilizer production worldwide and at the same time protecting the environment.” (Terry R. Collins, Ph.D., P.E. CEO/President BioNitrogen Corp.)

If we maintain our belief in the critical potential of art (for example by operating with local initiatives) we can demonstrate both alternatives to, and forms of critical stance against, the omnipresent economic matrices that threaten life-sustaining systems on a global scale.

Particular images insistently recur in our mind’s eye once we have first seen them, be it because of their composition, a certain facial expression, a puzzling quality, sheer brute repetition or through their capacity to disturb and shock.

Likewise, the media strategically and intentionally reverse engineer these qualities and their sensory affects to induce pathologies within the viewer.

In spite of these tactics, a kind of manipulation-literacy emerges that is aware, wary and weary of the constructive role of such images.
Economic and political needs shape so-called public opinion, thereby sustaining a power regime, which presumes itself to be a force for growth but whose primary agenda it is to keep on accumulating material wealth.

Over the past decade, I have sporadically collected newspaper clippings relating to such specific thematic concerns, clippings from which a multitude of tangents reach out, marking out many of the major ecological crises we are faced with in our age.

Some of these themes are profoundly interrelated with conceptions and visions that have crystallized out of pre-enlightenment beliefs and reveal a fascination with ideas and explanatory models circling around life and the life force itself – the doctrine, also known as ‘vitalism’, that there exists a certain force constituting life itself, a force that cannot be made or copied, a vis vitalis. Such superstitious notions became less prevalent following the emergence of the mechanistic Cartesian Weltanschauung, which became a dominant doctrine or modus operandi and, in the name of Reason, closed off the apertures of obscurantist beliefs and animalistic narratives so vital as explanatory models in earlier society.

This overall focus and a range of system studies and resultant productions have led to the related considerations and formations that now constitute the current exhibition. The exhibition, the studies and the ways of thinking are, as it were, enmeshed.

Tue Greenfort (b. 1973 in Holbæk (Denmark) lives and works in Denmark and Berlin. He Studied at Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule), Frankfurt am Main with Prof. Thomas Bayrle and at Academy of Fünen, Denmark with Prof. Jesper Christiansen and Prof Lars Bent Petersen. Until August 2014 his works are on display in his first Danish solo exhibition BUTTERLAND. Art, ecology and other scales in SORØ KUNSTMUSEUM. Further solo exhibitions were shown at Kunstraum Dornbirn, Austria (2012), Feeder Canal, Bristol (2012), South London Gallery, London (2011). In Germany his public art work NEOBIOTA is still on view at KVB Nord-Süd Stadtbahn, Underground
Station Breslauer Platz, Cologne. In 2012 he recieved the GASAG Art Prize which included a solo exhibition at Berlinische Galerie, Berlin. At dOCUMENTA (13)he presented his The Worldly House: An Archive Inspired by Donna Haraway’s Writings on Multispecies Co-Evolution.

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David Zink Yi

Johann König, Berlin is delighted to be able to present the fourth solo exhibition of David Zink Yi’s work in the Gallery. The driving force behind Zink Yi’s artistic creations – be they in the form of sculpture, film or photographs – is the all-encompassing and multi-layered inquiry into the phenomenon of identity. When contemplating his works, we believe at first to be able to recognize familiar motifs, which, however, Zink Yi then de-stabilizes by means of shifts, or by the manner of display or portrayal, so creating a new image.

Standing – or rather, lying – in the spatial and conceptual centre of the exhibition in Johann König’s Southern Gallery is one of the major works in David Zink Yi's current sculptural oeuvre: Untitled (Architeuthis), 2013, a naturalistic representation of the creature of that name. The work is part of a series of ceramic sculptures created over the past two years, each on average 19 ft long and weighing 440 lbs, each elaborately glazed and shimmering in a range of opalescent colours. According to the latest scientific research, a real-life architeuthis can grow to up to 46 ft long and lives in the sea at depths of up to 12,000 ft. It was only one year ago, in 2013, that an international research team managed to capture film footage of a giant deep-sea squid in its natural habitat – a world first, although the existence of giant squid had been scientifically established since the nineteenth century with the help of carcass parts washed up on beaches. Accordingly, David Zink Yi presents his architeuthis as an unmoving, lifeless form, pressed to the floor. It seems as if this deep-sea dweller too has been washed ashore and has perished, snatched away from its natural environment. In 2012, during an exhibition at the Tate Modern, David Zink Yi himself emphasized the importance of the creature’s lifeless state: "... sure, these molluscs in general offer a fascinating motif for sculpture, but for me it’s not so much about a realistic reproduction of Nature, but more a reference to this strange moment when these creatures reveal themselves to us, as a kind of garbage of Nature. It is this moment that is for me a much more intriguing motif." And so Untitled (Architeuthis), with its magnificently iridescent surface, seems like a piece of sepulchure sculpture highlighting the transition between two separate worlds. David Zink Yi places the ceramic work in a pool of Japanese ink and syrup. This is less a narrative element than a formal decision, since it gives the sculpture a pedestal or frame.

David Zink Yi, (b. 1973 in Lima/Peru) studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich and at the Universität der Künste, Berlin. His most recent solo exhibitions were at Hauser&Wirth, Zurich (2013), Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2013), Museo de arte de Lima (2012), NBK Berlin (2012) as well as in the Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2011), MAK, Wien (2010) or at the Kunst Halle, Sankt Gallen (2009). He took part in group exhibitions in the Tate Modern, London (2012), Museo Sala de arte, Mexico (2012) and Ludwig Forum im Aachen, Germany (2012). In 2013 David Zink Yi participated in the 55.Biennale in Venice. Works by Zink Yi are represented in numerous collections such as those of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the MUDAM, Luxemburg and Museum Ludwig, Cologne.

Opening: 4 July 2014, 6 – 9 pm

Johann König, Berlin
Dessauer Strasse 6/7 - 10963 Berlin
Opening hours Tue-Sat 10am - 6pm

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