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13/9/2007

Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art 2007

Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

The prizewinner for the Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art 2007 was selected: Ceal Floyer

Jeanne Faust, Ceal Floyer, Damián Ortega and Tino Sehgal are the artists who will compete for Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst 2007.

The jury's decision reflects the diversity of artistic production in Germany, not only with regard to the different nationalities involved, but also in terms of the media and artistic strategies used. The jury focused on artists whose works are regarded as being socially, conceptually and formally innovative. A full explanation given by the jury is enclosed.

The four artists will present their works at a joint exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof from 14 September to 4 November 2007.

Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst 2007 conveys the impression of being a counterprogram to the heated frenzy of this year’s art summer. This prize is not loud, importunate and sensational, but instead quiet, reduced and pensive. The four nominated artists - Jeanne Faust, Ceal Floyer, Damián Ortega and Tino Sehgal - have avoided all superficial effects. With their works, they go against the grain of the market-driven art scene as well as the blatant aesthetic of advertising, cinema and pop music, whose insistent suction they deliberately evade. The artists of the 2007 prize intend to disrupt comfortably established perceptions, to induce deeper reflections and, above all, to direct attention to delicate nuances.
All four artists take as their point of departure simple, seldom-considered structures of everyday life-a stairway, a sound, an object, a concept, a movement. They direct their gazes to the wondrous details of life, to phenomena which, through the charged energy in the work of art, suddenly attain new and exciting significance. This strategy of reevaluation extends even to the mediality of the works, which put themselves into question and resist any classification in terms of genres such as sculpture, performance or film. The 2007 prize is characterized by open structures and by profound doubt with regard to firmly fixed concepts of art and society. It is an award of rigorous inquiries, of precise statements and, at the same time, a prize of subtle interspaces.

Jeanne Faust, a German film artist residing in Hamburg and a participant in the Ars Viva Prize of 2005, injects irritations into her filmic works through narrational strategies which come to a halt right out of the blue, remain fragmentary and, precisely for that reason, direct attention to the language of the film. For the 2007 prize, she has presented a recent work seldom shown up to now and entitled “The Mansion.” Once again, this basically short film lives from fundamental inconsistencies and a downright adventurous, open structure: Presented to view is an encounter between two men who are revealed during the course of a brief dialogue to be father and son, played by Sandro Marbellini (son) and the venerable actor Lou Castel (father). One has the impression of observing a psychological pattern until two henchmen of the father appear, and the conversation suddenly takes a menacing turn. In between, as if out of boredom, birdcalls are imitated. Ultimately the film ends bizarrely with a guitar piece sounding from beyond the camera’s range. No persistent plot can be recognized; everything seems to be placed in disconnected proximity. It is clear, however, that Jeanne Faust is quoting the clichés of such genres as family dramas or gangster films. Other passages have the sober precision of documentary films. Only a section of the “house“ referred to by the work’s title may be seen. One gains an impression that the claustrophobic spatial situation of the sound studio could be a reason for the oppressive atmosphere of the conversation—but there are no further indications to support this supposition. Jeanne Faust, who delights in alluding to Fassbinder with the open structure of her work, returns the question of significance entirely to the viewer. “The Mansion” is a presentation of the filmic possibilities inherent to a puzzling conversation - a clever deconstruction clothed in the highly poetic arrangement of a work of art.

Ceal Floyer, born in Pakistan, lived for a long time in Canada and England before coming to Berlin ten years ago. She made a name for herself at international group exhibitions and biennials with quite pointed and puristic works whose apparent simplicity shifts for the most part into highly complex circumstances. Here as well, Ceal Floyer opens the exhibition section in the Rieckhallen with what seems at first to be an extremely simple construction which she created specifically for the prize, namely a set of stairs. With its black, freely hovering appearance, the stairway is so perfectly installed in the large, open space that one wishes to step onto it and stride right up. Nonetheless, with this Minimalist construction it is a matter, not of architecture, but of a metaphor or a symbol. For step by step, all elements of the stairway consist of large loudspeakers from which may be heard, again and again, the same rising sound which, for its part, is temporally and spatially staggered so as to convey the acoustic impression of a “stairway.” The work of art becomes a simultaneous auditory and visual experience, oscillating between image and spatiality. Like the great Minimalist artists Robert Morris or Donald Judd, Floyer conceives of perception as an encounter occurring in time and space. Ceal Floyer radicalizes this approach with an incredible short-circuit between reality and abstraction which is scarcely capable of being semantically resolved. Her work is everything all at once: an apparatus, a construction, an acoustic sculpture; but also a model, a composition, a movement. This permanent interplay in the work is staged by the artist with amazing ease. As a strict, black structure in the bright, white space of a museum, as a serial pattern in front of the planar wall, the stairway achieves great elegance. In an ingenious and sophisticated manner, the artist employs a simple example to treat the great themes of art: fundamental questions of sculpture and perception as well as the eternal search for transcendence and beauty.

Damián Ortega, born in Mexico and continuing to reside there up to now, has since last year been a guest of the renowned DAAD Artists Program in Berlin. His artistic approach proceeds from elements of sculpture whose forms he redesignates and converts into symbols of social processes. He became known throughout the world for taking apart a Mexican VW Beetle and indicating the conditions under which it had been produced. For the 2007 prize, Ortega took simple bricks and arranged them into fleeting, kinetic sculptures whose motion sequences he then filmed. In the exhibition, Ortega stages nine of these basically documentary films as an overlapping and also noisy event which in turn can be experienced as a spatial work of art. The bricks are presented in the nine films as geometric patterns which, on command, playfully fall down like dominoes. The artist deliberately chose previously-used bricks which are already charged with a past construction history. They were filmed on empty lots in Berlin-Mitte, not far from the museum - in other words, at sites which themselves stand for upheaval and disintegration. With the arrangement of the bricks and the title of the work, “Nine Types of Terrain,” Ortega also makes reference to the famous Chinese tract “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu. The collapse of “positions” and their constant reestablishment in the filmic loop point towards the endlessness of combat and war. In Damián Ortega’s art, simple and indestructible bricks are transformed into highly sensuous and simultaneously complex symbols for the fragility of life.

Tino Sehgal, both German and British, born in London, creates works without a work. His radical artistic concept, with which he has already created quite a stir at international group exhibitions and biennials, consists in the creation of so-called situations. Performers make speeches or carry out activities in museum spaces with the goal of involving visitors in a discourse concerning art and society. There is neither a script nor a sequential plan, and it is not permitted to take photographs of the work. Everything remains open and is utterly responsive to the respective situation. In the exhibition for the 2007 prize, Tino Sehgal is presenting his most recent and, up to now, most complex work, which it took him several years to develop. The point of departure is a series of questions concerning the economy, especially the economic thinking of the West, which the artist endeavors to investigate with deep scrutiny and through the use of theses. The performers, all of whom have an academic background, often even doctoral degrees in the natural sciences or philosophy, were provided with statements from the last three centuries but are also encouraged to bring their own positions into play. Just as in a game, Tino Sehgal lays down only the structure and the rules; the concrete course of events with the visitors is entirely at the discretion of his “interpreters.” They also have the prerogative of ending the conversation by using the words “Welcome to this situation” in order to take up a new starting position. Altogether there are six such basic formations which, with regard to their aesthetic disposition, are derived from group pictures in the history of painting. This relationship to classical art is also the reason why “This situation“ takes place, not in the Rieckhallen, but in the older, more traditional building of the Bahnhof (once a train station). The slowed-down movements of the players, the highly complex and vexing references to economic culture, and the direct dialogue in a museum context combine to create an aesthetic thought-form which oscillates freely between dance, theater, politics, philosophy and art.

Dr. Joachim Jäger, Curator of the exhibition

Image: Ceal Floyer, "Scale", 2007, sound installation/sculpture
24 wall-mounted speakers, computer, 12 stereo amplifiers
Ausstellungsansicht Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin, Foto: Jens Ziehe
Courtesy: Esther Schipper, Lisson Gallery, 303 Gallery, pinksummer contemporary art

Press Officer
INGEBORG WIENSOWSKI - KATHARINA VON CHLEBOWSKI email. presse@preis2007.de

Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin
Invalidenstraße 50–51 10557 Berlin
Opening Times
Tues.- Fri. 10:00 a.m.- 6:00 p.m.
Sat. 11 a.m.- 8 p.m.
Sun. 11 a.m.- 6 p.m.
Ticket–Prices
Combi–Ticket 10.– EUR
Reduced 5.– EUR

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