calendario eventi  :: 

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6/6/2010

Two exhibitions

Caprice Horn Gallery, Berlin

FUCK UPS, FABLES AND FIASCOS
Powerful metaphors, stereotypes and fairytales about justice and tolerance

The American administration and its allies used a powerful metaphor and stereotyping to win public support in their use of force in the gulf conflict of 1991 “villain attacks powerful victim and then the hero comes to defeat the villain and rescue the victim. Villain is not rational, he does not respond to persuasion or rational reasoning, thus the only way of dealing with him is through defeat”, Paul Wahrhaftig.

Certainly the Americans are not the only ones using metaphors or stereotyping of this nature, to gain public support. Throughout history this very effective tool to incite ugly nationalism, religious conflict and gender and sexual bigotry, to name but a few, has been successfully implemented.

Stereotyping and demonization do not allow for creating alternative metaphors or understanding of the other. It does not contribute to constructive resolution of conflicts or the annihilation of bigotry. Add the often lethal ingredient of journalistic stereotyping and incitation to polarization and you have a cocktail of angst, prejudice, ageism, mainstreaming or isolation of minority groups be it political, religious, sexual or otherwise.

Ignorance and stereotyping perpetuate and generates preconceptions and misunderstanding. Conflict and exploitation of weaker groups seems almost a given as one side attempts to impose its imperialistic world vision on the other. Whether this is conveyed either by coercion or consensus, often depends on the momentary zeitgeist and what is required to win as many as possible for the cause.

This exhibition is an attempt to look at just such issues. Obviously an issue as complex as the above is difficult to integrate in a one off exhibition and requires longitudinal discourse and new perspectives, but this is an attempt to make a start. With a number of artists who have been preoccupied with just such issues.

With Lukas Maximilian Hüller, Mitra Tabrizian, Artists Anonymous, Martin Beauregard, Tae Hun Kang, Nadine Rennert Sunil Gupta
Li Wei, Hannah van Ginkel, Khaled Hafez, Daniel & Geo Fuchs, Meghan Boody, Yves Gellie, Hesam Rahmanian, Ed Kashi, Democracia, Matthew Carver, Sammy Baloji, Abdulnasser Gharem, Azadeh Akhlaghi, Yana Payusova

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James Clar
What Goes Around Comes Around

A symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace. - Vernor Vinge

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. - Ronald Reagan

In his debut solo exhibition in Berlin, James Clar has targeted recurring themes of human behaviour that echo and evolve with the progression of technology. What Goes Around Comes Around takes a macro and micro look at the effects of media, technology, and popular culture as it reverberates around the world. The works are sculptural pieces that explore nationalism and identity. This show also marks James' return to flat 2D works while still exploring new visual techniques.

What Goes Around Comes Around follows James Clar’s successful solo at Art Dubai, ‘Acceleration’. Both shows offer James’ unique perspective of American and global politics, from his interesting vantage point as an American artist practicing in the Middle East. They also continue his fascination with pop culture - the all-connecting force that makes the world a smaller place and allows for ideas to disseminate at rapid speed.

James Clar’s life-sized soldiers eliminate the imagined fantasy of the spectator. They are pop art pieces that poke fun at the American military machine. By bringing the soldier into the realm of the real they engage you in your environment, amplifying the actual violence the small toy soldiers represent. Are they there to engage you in the act of battle, or are they simply toys? James' American soldiers are engaged in a full-blown tour around the world.
In the words of the artist - “I remember playing with toy soldiers when I was a child growing up in the US. We'd stage very elaborate battle scenes with friends that would play out over days at a time. I find it interesting how nationalism and military dominance is encouraged in youth.”

This media piece is made up of two screens that face each other. One screen plays Fox News on a loop, while the second plays Al Jazeera. The reflections of both screens meet to form ambientcolour - suddenly devoid of varied view points and political agenda. The difference between me and you is the information we are raised on. This piece takes the visual information displayed from the most popular news outlets in the USA and the Middle East and combines their light in a diffused piece of acrylic.

James Clar
James Clar’s work is a fusion of technology, pop art, street culture, and design. His work has been an exploration of visual technologies, a study of light and perception, and often charts the common intersection of light that is shared between all visual mediums. Throughout his artistic career, through various developments of media technologies, the one defining factor of his work is its minimalism.

James has been recognized by various institutions and publications, following his thesis project for the NYU Interactive Telecommunication’s Program. He has been the artist-inresidence at Eyebeam Atelier in New York, and was the inaugural artist for the FedEx Institute of Technology & Lantana Projects in Memphis. James has exhibited at numerous gallery spaces including New Museum of Contemporary Arts, Chelsea Art Museum, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Milan Trienniale, and did a collaborative piece for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, which is part of their permanent collection.
James currently lives and works in Dubai.

Image: James Clar, And They Played For Days, 45 x 160 x 160 cm

Opening Monday 7 June 2010, 6-9pm

Galerie Caprice Horn
Rudi-Dutschke-Str. 26, 10969 Berlin
Opening hours: Tue.-Sat. 11am-6pm
free admission

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