Nathan Coley
dal 4/4/2008 al 9/7/2008
Segnalato da
4/4/2008
Nathan Coley
Haunch of Venison, Berlin
The artist present a large-scale sculptural work - a ten by six metre Western film-set street facade, complete with saloon and bar front. Coley's work breaks down our ideas and perceptions of space and the built environment, exploring our relationships to political borders and limitations, religious frontiers and ideals, analysing our investment and claims on architecture, public and private spaces.
For his first solo exhibition in Berlin, recent Turner Prize shortlisted artist Nathan Coley is to present a large-scale sculptural work - a ten by six metre Western film-set street facade, complete with saloon and bar front, at Haunch of Venison Berlin.
Coley's work breaks down our ideas and perceptions of space and the built environment, exploring our relationships to political borders and limitations, religious frontiers and ideals, analysing our investment and claims on architecture, public and private spaces. As per a real film set, the 1880s style Western facade will be made at 80% real size, its rough finish painted out entirely with black emulsion. Signage over the front of the three 'building' fronts has been removed, replaced instead with the text - WEALTH, BELIEF, LAND, MIND, LIFE - the five rights that every human is granted under Islam.
Largely made in the 1950s, Westerns traditionally assess issues of morality, religion and family during a time of unease and mistrust throughout the United States. Typically depicting historical events, myths and legends of American history from 70 years prior to their actual making, a physical fight for man’s basic rights is literally fought-out in on screen battles of good and evil, morality and immorality, right and wrong.
Of the work Coley comments, “We all have perceived ideas of what we are entitled to in our everyday lives that are built up by our society, our religion, political climate, our family and our friends. This is architecture that is built to be deliberately false, while focusing on two sets of ideas from very different corners of the globe.
Through a diverse range of media including public and gallery-based sculpture, photography, drawing and video Coley’s practice reveals that all architecture and urban environment is given meaning only by those who experience and invest in them, how our environment comes to represent values, beliefs and ideals of the society that builds and uses them, the social history and by the communities that populate them. Coley is interested in exploring how cultural views and ideas differ with the passage of time and between locations.
Haunch of Venison
Heidestrasse 46 - Berlin
Tue/Sat 11.00 - 18.00
Free admission