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13/7/2007

Three colours - White

Schloss Sacrow, Potsdam-Sacrow

Artistic director: Arvid Boellert

Exhibition curator: Mark Gisbourne

The Rohkunstbau XIV exhibition "THREE COLOURS -- WHITE" has invited ten contemporary artists to explore the complex issue of "Equality". In an analogy to "Three Colours – Blue, White, Red", the film series by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, the exhibition also highlights each artist's personal perspective. Curator Mark Gisbourne has chosen the colour white as a leitmotif, not in a strictly formal or literary sense, but as a potential point of orientation. At the same time, in their explicit relationship to the location, the works reflect the key characteristic of Rohkunstbau exhibitions as developed by co-founder and artistic director Arvid Boellert.

The painting by Gerhard Richter (Germany) is a punctum, and can hence be understood, within the exhibition context, as both initiating this discourse and its primary point of reference. In Richter's view, art is the most authentic form of reality. His response is always an image -- and his grey works respond to indifference and the refusal to take a stand and actively shape life.

Candice Breitz (South Africa) describes mass media-speak as a double-edged sword, levelling but providing a globally functioning voice. Her installation in Sacrow centres on mirrors with well-known pop-song texts, creating a disturbing insight into the essential ambiguity of equality as located somewhere between universal good and triviality.

The photographic works by Thomas Demand (Germany) reflect current media reality. "Attempt" pictures an undetonated bomb planned by the German RAF terrorist group. The topic itself is unsettling and the sense of unease is heightened by Demand's constructed space, eerily evoking a sterilised existence.

Gil Marco Shani (Israel) creates works of contrast, where the apparently simple linear images are sharply at odds with the violent acts depicted. The pictures stand as symbols of social upheavals that, in this closed emblematic style, have a deeply shocking impact.

In the World Premiere of his film installation, Julian Rosefeldt (Germany) combines the aesthetics of German Romanticism with current issues around national identity and the cliché of a dominant Leitkultur, projecting these concerns directly onto the palimpsest like the history of Schloss Sacrow.

The installation by Maria Chevska (UK) echoes with the resonance of Kafka's aphorism "A cage went in search of a bird", and explores the mutual reciprocity of language and the visual world on a range of diverse levels, internal and external, private and public, that are locked into a desperate struggle for understanding.

Jaroslaw Flicinski (Poland) sees his work as forming a single integrated multimedia experience. His installation shows a stranger discovering his own personal access to one of Flicinski's works by dancing in front it. At the same time, in the form of a video diary, Flicinski explores the origins of human existence.

Ola Kolehmainen (Finland) has already proclaimed that his great love is minimalism. Starting from large-scale photographs, usually of contemporary architecture, he then reduces the images to structures, and the grid, transforming the solidity of a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional plane.

In her installation, Ayse Erkmen (Turkey) creates a "seaweed curtain" to contextualize the central window of the palace, simultaneously obscuring and opening the view, dividing yet combining interior and park, facilitating a conscious awareness of these two elements, and creating a location where artificiality and nature, seriality and authenticity, the interior and exterior, meet and interrelate.

Thomas Rentmeister (Germany) presents the viewer with plies of white linen and other everyday objects, stacked to the ceiling. At first glance, the works appear imbued by a light but playful ironic humour. Yet one soon realises they harbour intricate, interwoven levels of meanings stretching far back into art history, back to Duchamp. Sugar cubes, cotton buds and tic tacs form a shopping list of whiteness, in a manner where pop art and minimalism meet.

Candice Breitz, Southafrica / photography and video
Maria Chevska, Great Britain / painting, installations
Thomas Demand, Germany / photography
Ayse Erkmen, Turkey / installations
Jaroslaw Flicinski, Poland / painting, installations
Ola Kolehmainen, Finnland / photography
Thomas Rentmeister, Germany / objects, installations
Gerhard Richter, Germany / painting
Julian Rosefeldt, Germany / photography and video
Gil Marco Shani, Israel / painting

This year's Rohkunstbau is moving to a new home - Schloss Sacrow, part of the complex of Palaces and Parks of Potsdam that are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This small late baroque palace is located in the only village between Berlin and Potsdam, yet nonetheless it is a place shaped by diverse, historically significant narratives.

Patron of THREE COLOURS -- BLUE WHITE RED from 2006 - 2008: José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission

The Rohkunstbau XIV exhibition is taking place at the invitation of Ars Sacrow e.V. in cooperation with the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg.

Rohkunstbau gratefully acknowledges support from the Federal Cultural Foundation, Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung, the federal state of Brandenburg, the Mittelbrandenburgische Sparkasse in Potsdam, and the Cision.

Organised by the Brandenburg Branch of the Foundation SPI.

Image: Ayse Erkmen, Whitish, 2007, Algue, designed by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Colour White, 900x330 cm. Exhibition view: Schloss Sacrow/ Potsdam. Photography: Roland Horn. Courtesy: Ayse Erkmen & Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin.

Press and communication: Bluhm PR, Sylke Bluhm and Ron Bloch
Tel: +49 30 24084788 Fax: +49 30 24084789 e-mail info@bluhmpr.de

Opening: July 14, 3pm

Schloss Sacrow
Krampnitzer Strasse, 14469 Potsdam-Sacrow Berlin
Opening time: Saturday and Sunday, 10am - 8pm
ADMISSION FEES: Exhibition: 6 €

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