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26/9/2007

Thomas Kratz

Center, Berlin

Licking Its Eyeball or Wie ich dem toten Hasen die Bilder erkläre

Center is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of the London based artist Thomas Kratz.

With „Licking Its Eyeball or Wie ich dem toten Hasen die Bilder erkläre.“, Thomas Kratz presents an abstraction of a performance he gave at a galllery in Lisbon in 2006. Under the title „Wie ich dem toten Hasen die Bilder erkläre.“ (‘How I explain pictures to the dead hare’), he has re-staged Joseph Beuys’ key performance from 1965. Even though following the original’s procedure and formal aspects, Kratz’ intention is not an analysis of the icon that is Beuys. With the repetition of a given procedure, he is shifting the focus on the aspect of the ritual and its ability to tie the past into the present, thus touching on “the underlying riddle that art faces us with” (Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful, 1986). For the exhibition at Center, the pictorial repetition of the performance gives way to an acoustic representation. The reduction down to language and acoustic sign does away with the pathos of the iconic. For three hours, the acoustic traces of the past are transmitted into a new space-time context by two loudspeakers. Although this transmission lingers on the edge to a documentary character, it simultaneously calls for more : it challenges the audience to concentrate on an abstracted absence while sensitising perception with its fragmentary character. Like a blind person slowly groping towards an object, we are taught first how to read and to spell through hearing, and then, through language, to bestow relevance and permanence upon the enigma.

Thomas Kratz studied at the ‘Hochschule für Gestaltung ZKM’ in Karlsruhe, at the ‘Akademie der Bildenden Künste’ in Munich with Günther Förg. He lives and works in London, and at the Royal College of Art in London.
He was presented in several group exhibitions in different galleries and art insitutions (among others: ICA, London, Goethe Institut in Rabat, The Breeder in Athens, Haunch of Venison, London) and had solo presentations at Galerie Vera Cortes in Lisbon in 2006 and Kunstraum München in 2007.

Opening: 27.09.2007, 20:00

Center
Kurfürstenstrasse 174
10785 Berlin
Opening hours: Saturday 15-18:00, and by appointment

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