Nina Beier & Marie Lund
Carola Bonfili
Claire Fontaine
Alexej Meschtschanow
Ian Tweedy
Ilaria Gianni
The exhibition focuses upon the incorporation of historical de-functionalised objects in recent artworks, understanding them as present ruins, and their return, as a symptom of the condition of fragility of the time we are living. On show works by: Nina Beier & Marie Lund, Carola Bonfili, Claire Fontaine, Alexej Meschtschanow, Ian Tweedy.
curated by Ilaria Gianni
Fragile Currency focuses upon the incorporation of historical de-functionalised
objects in recent artworks, understanding them as present ruins, and their return,
as a symptom of the condition of fragility of the time we are living. The
fragmentary-transitory object that which was, has become, and is in becoming seems
to be at the core of the chosen works by Nina Beier & Marie Lund, Carola Bonfili,
Claire Fontaine, Alexej Meschtschanow, and Ian Tweedy. The question Fragile Currency
attempts to explore, is why and how the remains, the traces of the past are being
used and incorporated in single art practices more and more often and how these
realities are subjected to critical reappraisal.
By recognizing an increasingly present tendency in contemporary art, which engages
with the residue, Fragile Currency is not affirming the appearance of a compact
movement, rather it is recognizing in the artists' practice a modality of reflecting
upon a common condition of the present time. Given the trembling socio-political
situation characterized by an economical order imminently facing a state of crisis;
at a time when the future seems more ambiguous than ever, and the present is
dominated by a sense of fragility, the past seems to have become the only certainty.
Ordinary objects that have been pushed aside by time to become remnants, appear in
Nina Beier's & Marie Lund's, Carola Bonfili's, Claire Fontaine's, Alexej
Meschtschanow's, and Ian Tweedy's work, acquiring a new solemn power, which can only
be grasped in its repercussions, and in its effects.
Fragile Currency intends the notion of ruin in its condition of object produced and
discarded as a result of capitalism's expansion and recession. The objects, deprived
of their use value, gain autonomy and the disintegration of their function makes
them vessels for new signification. Fragile Currency attempts to analyse the nature
of these residues and the utilization art makes of them, not under a nostalgic point
of view, rather underlining the way in which the abandoned, the forgotten, the
disavowed, are spontaneously recuperated once again, rearranged into novel
constellations, and transformed into sites where a new kind of investment occurs.
The notion of residue can thus be likened to a 'fragile currency'. Outdated
capitalist products, which have lost their strength as merchandise, open up as
potential spaces of critique. The corsets, feathers and combs, that were the ruins
in Walter Benjamin's Passagen-Werk (1927-1940) - constructions and products
'precursors' of a time that were to provide the necessary material for an
interpretation of history's most recent configurations and primary sources of
political resistance – have today become books, photographs, tapes, posters,
fragments of buildings, and desks: currencies of yesterday, which have survived in
their deepest essence despite loosing their social value. In sum, Fragile Currency
intends the incorporation, and the questioning of ruins in recent artworks, as a
possibility for transition to occur. The works by Nina Beier & Marie Lund, Carola
Bonfili, Claire Fontaine, Alexej Meschtschanow, and Ian Tweedy, are to be
considered in their political instructiveness, and read through their ability to
point out the faults of a present system by offering a counter-narrative to it.
Klemm's
Brunnenstrasse 7 - Berlin
Free admission