Jonah Freeman
dal 30/1/2004 al 21/2/2004
Segnalato da
30/1/2004
Jonah Freeman
Play Gallery (old location), Berlin
Freeman's work oscillates between film, photography, drawing, text and installation. In his new project, The Franklin Abraham, Freeman takes a city enclosed in a single structure as a platform for several interconnected bodies of work.
The Franklin Abraham
Vernissage: Saturday, 31st of Jan. 2004, 7pm
In collaboration with Andrew Kreps Gallery NYC
Partner event of Transmediale 04
Jonah Freeman's work examines a variety of ideas and emotions surrounding
the contemporary urban landscape. His recent projects have focused on the
urban interior as theatrical space and the movement through those
environments as a montage of phantasmagorical fantasy worlds.
Freeman's work oscillates between film, photography, drawing, text and
installation. In his new project, The Franklin Abraham, Freeman takes a
city enclosed in a single structure as a platform for several
interconnected bodies of work.
The Franklin Abraham is the result of an ambitious real estate project
that has lasted over two hundred years. The structure began under the
auspices of industrialist Maxwell Blum during the Pale Blue Epoch of
metropolitan development. It started as a residential tower designed in
the once fashionable rococo-moderne style only to grow into the hybrid
monstrosity that exists today. The building expanded into a radical
architectural development that encompasses residential, retail,
manufacturing, commercial industry, government and entertainment in a
single structure. It currently houses 2 million inhabitants, is a mile and
half wide, two miles long and, in places, over 150 stories tall. Involving
several hundred thousand workers and thousands of architects, the
construction has spanned several generations, with the result that the
total design and program of the structure has become incoherent and
incongruent.
The primary work in the exhibition is a film produced by "Fine Arts
Unternehmen Film+Video". It is a partial glimpse into the present state of
the society within The Franklin Abraham. The cinematic structure is
modelled after the sprawling nature of the building. The film offers
fragments of narrative that it explores briefly and then leaves behind: a
despondent teenage girl and her older newspaper-stealing boyfriend; a
timid office worker on a date with a sinister-looking romeo; a bored,
subterranean youth gang; the tribulations of the family that runs the
mega-corporation that owns the building and more. The camera gives a
voyeuristic and indifferent perspective as it moves through the corridors
and passageways of the structure painting a broad picture of a
late-capitalist community.
Jonah Freeman Lives and works in New York City. He has had solo shows at
Edward Mitterand in Geneva, Switzerland (2002), in the project room at
Artists Space in New York (2001) and several shows at Andrew Kreps
Gallery, New York (since 1997). Among several group exhibitions he has
recently been included in shows at Danese Gallery, Matthew Marks Gallery
and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City.
In the image a frame from 'The Franklin Abraham'
Opening hours: Mo-Sat, 12 - 7pm
play_gallery for still and motion pictures
hannoversche strasse 1 d-10115 berlin
T+49-30-2345 5753 F +49-30-2345 5754