16/1/2008
Sophie Erlund
Program, Berlin
For Newa, artist has created a sculptural installation with pieces that reference and continue the history of Hotel Newa, the former Russian-owned hotel that is the current home of Program in Berlin developing a practice that both dissects and celebrates the presence of past narratives in a contemporary world.
Berlin’s
recent history is characterized by radical transformations
brought on by politics, ideology, cruelty, destruction, fear and
ultimately hope – an assaulting and often uncomfortable process of
transformation that has left physical reminders of the various
‘Berlins’ that have been. Berlin is a monument to a plural history.
With each subsequent sea change, roads are renamed, ruins are rebuilt,
and materials from destroyed buildings are reassembled, unrecognizable
and mute to the stories of the past.
Berlin-based Danish artist Sophie Erlund has been
developing a practice that both dissects and celebrates the presence of
past narratives in a contemporary world. For Newa,
Erlund has created a sculptural installation with pieces that reference
and continue the history of Hotel Newa, the former Russian-owned hotel
that is the current home of PROGRAM in Berlin.
The building’s colorful
history, from its time as Hotel Nordland at the beginning of the 20th
century, to the pageantry of the interwar years, to the 1950s and 60s
when it housed the Russian secret police, provided the material for a
series of sculptures that find their origin within or alongside these
histories. Archive images, interviews with previous guests of the
hotel, and on site research become both the medium and material with
which Erlund expresses the poetics of physically experiencing space
(Gaston Bachelard), while acknowledging the constructed nature of this
experience (Jeff Wall).
Opening Thursday, January 17th, 7pm
Program
Invalidenstrasse 115, Berlin
Free Admission