calendario eventi  :: 

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12/2/2009

Two exhibitions

Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, St. Gallen

Mariana Castillo Deball
Kaleidoscopic Eye

Jurg Lehni & Alex Rich
Things to Say

The Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen is presenting the first solo exhibition of Mexican artist Mariana Castillo Deball (*1975) in Switzerland. At the same time we will be showing a project by Swiss artist Jürg Lehni (*1978) and English artist Alex Rich (*1975). We are very pleased to begin 2009 with this double exhibition, which scrutinizes the functions of science and technique in very different ways. In this process-oriented shows, not only will the participating artists function as important protagonists, but so too will the other guests invited on different occasions. Furthermore, the audience itself will be interacting with the exhibits.

In her works, Mariana Castillo Deball maps out areas of action and memories as well as object worlds that all display a specific historical and cultural context. During her research, the artist looks for institutions that house collections, classifications, catalogues and (re-)presentations of cultural assets, such as libraries, museums and archives, and which represent a symbolic classification of the world. After the process of collecting and selecting information, she often creates site-specific installations, objects, photographs, video and audio-works, that feature a fictional background story. Castillo Deball not only consciously uses scientific methods such as collecting, evaluating, selecting, but also theoretical writing. The artist finds a media transfer for these processes whilst checking the conventions and standards of the museum's presentation and its archive management. In terms of content, the spectrum of visual and narrative examinations covers many different fields, such as archaeology, anarchy, ethnology, the musealization, display conventions within museums, philosophy and the history of technics. Alongside this approach, the artist also shows a special interest in collaborations with other cultural producers. These often result in performances, book projects or installations.

During the last few years, Castillo Deball’s mode of work has been based on a kaleidoscopic approach towards language: Different disciplines and ways to describe the world can clash and thereby generate a polyphonic voice. Based on the idea of a kaleidoscope, Castillo Deball has developed a project for the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen in which she implements her central artistic theme of site-specific archiving for St. Gallen. In our world that is flooded by masses of information, this topic is more relevant than ever. In her work with archives, the artist is above all interested in changing, deleting or reversing their order and thus bestowing them with a new reading mode. In these ordered spaces, she seeks to find proof of the fact that we cannot make sense of the world without treating it irreverently and playfully. In the exhibition, as well as in her artistic practice, a tension between order and coincidence exists, especially when these two elements coexist.

“Kaleidoscopic Eye” seeks to serve as a connection between important sites and the history of St. Gallen. The encyclopaedic archive of materials of the Sitterwerk, the city’s textile history and the Kunst Halle are involved. The Sitterwerk with its database of materials and its extensive library functions as a place for ways to sort things, for experimentation as well as for artistic production (Art Foundry). Castillo Deball is going to conduct research in this place and will carry out an intervention, which will be displayed in both the Sittertal and the Kunst Halle. The artist will also produce a new film dedicated to the tradition of embroidery in St. Gallen which will show its manifold patterns in a kaleidoscopic way. It will be shown in the Kunst Halle alongside further works recently created by the artist. Castillo Deball will also enliven the Kunst Halle with a monumental installation that will in fact constitute the exhibition architecture. An artistic publication with texts by Mariana Castillo Deball and Dario Gambosi, professor of Art History at the University of Geneva, accompanies the show.

Alongside the exhibition by Mariana Castillo Deball, the Kunst Halle will also be showing “Things to Say”, a large presentation by the artistic collaboration, Jürg Lehni and Alex Rich, that deals playfully with the development of printing technologies, as well as with the interface between machines and users, and the communication of information. They broach the issues of the unexplored potential of everyday technologies and their ability to perform functions that had not been envisioned either by the designers or the engineers. The exhibition is a furtherance of the project “A Recent History of Writing”, which was realised in 2008 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Its purpose was to turn assumptions that one kind of communication is more authentic, direct or valid than another upside down and to find meaning and poetry in unexpected places.

In the Kunst Halle, Lehni and Rich display some of their drawing, spraying and punching machines, which serve as means of communication and design tools both for the artists and for the visitors. There is, for example Hektor (developed in 2002 by Lehni in collaboration with engineer Uli Franke), a graffiti robot which - impelled by two motors - imitates the artist's hand in a rather shaky way. Lehni and Rich also invite the audience to become active participants and get creative. Visitors are encouraged to print current headlines on postcards and send them out to the world. In Empty Words, a plotter punches words selected by the visitors into paper. One is invited to find the balance between auto-manifestation and technological constraints. The postcards and posters created may be taken home. With Wood Work we will have a small, special printing press; a special moulding cutter stamps words from a wooden board that is subsequently used as pressure plate. The posters can be hung up right away. Finally, Viktor draws directly on the wall of the exhibition room with chalk, thus rounding up the project in a spectacular manner.

Viktor and his siblings are not just machines; they are also statements about the contemporary desktop publishing design chain whose standards and software exert great influence over the aesthetics of our everyday life. The devices can also be read as an appeal to not simply accept the constraints and the given functional procedures of today’s software, but to revise one’s own tools and invent new ones.

Martino Gamper, considered one of the emerging designers of the international scene, is creating the furniture for “Things to Say”.

Image: Mariana Castillo Deball, Untitled (sleepers, Berlin) III, 2004. C-print 30x40cm

For questions and further information, please do not hesitate to contact Giovanni Carmine at carmine@k9000.ch or Maren Brauner at brauner@k9000.ch.

Public guided tours:
Thursday, 5th March 2009, 6.00 p.m.
Sunday, 29th March 2009, 3.00 p.m.

Art Lunch
Thursday, 19th March 2009, 12.00 a.m.
Guided tour with lunch as prepared by our guest cooks, the Palace team.

Talk and workshop with Jörg Lehni & Alex Rich:
Saturday, 4th April 2009, 3:00 p.m.
An event in collaboration with Migros-Kulturprozent (http://www.digitalbrainstorming.ch)

"Things to Say" is enabled by Swatch. Special thanks to Sitterwerk/Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen, Heeb Elektro AG Küsnacht, Speckert + Klein AG Zürich for the cooperation.

Press preview: Friday, February 13th 2009, 11 a.m.
Opening: Friday, February 13th 2009, 6 p.m.

The Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen is supported by St. Gallen City Council, Kulturförderung Kanton St. Gallen, Swisslos, Migros Kulturprozent, Fondation Nestlé pour l’Art (Partenariat) and the St. Galler Tagblatt. The educational program is enabled by Raiffeisen.

Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen
Davidstrasse 40 CH-9000 St. Gallen
Opening hours:
Tue – Fri, 12:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Sat / Sun, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

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