Jimmie Durham
dal 28/4/2006 al 30/6/2006
Segnalato da
28/4/2006
Jimmie Durham
Barbara Wien gallery, Berlin
An unusual description of material is typical of Jimmie Durham’s sculptures, in which texts and stones play an active roll. Aided by a stone, cars are crushed, refrigerators demolished, windows smashed, paint tubes squeezed, or as in the afore mentioned work in Sunderland, a boat is sunk with a boulder.
Elements and Materials from my atelier in Berli's Grunenwald Forest
Jimmie Durham’s recently released book begins with a description of the materials he used in the action “The Second Particle Wave Theory“ in Sunderland (England):
English words, wood, stone, river wear.
This unusual description of material is typical of Jimmie Durham’s sculptures, in which texts and stones play an active roll. Aided by a stone, cars are crushed, refrigerators demolished, windows smashed, paint tubes squeezed, or as in the afore mentioned work in Sunderland, a boat is sunk with a boulder. The vocabulary used to speak of art and other circumstances is examined through the accompanying texts.
His methods are linguistic research and observations of nature and culture. He identifies himself as a ’theoretical biologist’ who depicts the behaviors and norms of cohabitation in various communities.
Jimmie Durham’s work always contains a distinct critique- directed towards capitalist consumer culture, all forms of racism and the arrogant western notions of art which devalue the rest of the art world as ’folklore’. In a speech at the World Social Forum in Alegre (Brazil), he explicitly spoke for a boycott of the Sao Paulo biennial as Brazil’s indigenous people do not have equal human rights.
In the current exhibition- his second solo show in our gallery - Jimmie Durham will be showing assemblages and sculptures, objects from his studio in Grunewald in Berlin. He has been working in this spacious studio for years, a space which Hitler had built for Arno Breker in 1940. To some extent, the assemblies reflect upon the historically loaded environment and the architecture of the Nazis but they are also descriptions of found objects which Jimmie Durham found on walks though the forest such as giant mushrooms and plastic trash as well as objects which accumulated in his studio; gloves, tools, luminescent papers, bicycle gears, etc.
The assemblages are an inventory of every day things. As worthless as the objects appear to be, they are merged into an image, characterized and accompanied by comments.
Jimmie Durham, who has lived in Berlin since 1998, will leave the city for Rome in July
Opening: 28 April 2006
Barbara Wien gallery
Linienstrasse 158 - Berlin
Hours:Di-Fr 14-19, Sa 12-18