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3/12/2009

Carlos Amorales, Navid Nuur and San Keller

Fridericianum, Kassel

In December the Kunsthalle Fridericianum once again reveals itself to be an important venue for topical debates on human issues. Performativity and processuality figure prominently in three solo exhibitions. Mexican artist Carlos Amorales and Dutch artist Navid Nuur open their exhibitions on December 4, and starting on December 11, Swiss artist San Keller will present his exhibition project to the public.

The exhibition Nuevos Ricos will present for the first time the entire product range and scope of the art project and record label of the same name by Carlos Amorales. The Kunsthalle Fridericianum will not only provide an overview of the history and social positioning of the project, but above all will reflect the broad artistic spectrum: The abstract ground plan of a concert hall becomes a platform for performances and concerts as well as for discussions about topics such as copyright and piracy.

With the exhibition THE VALUE OF VOID Navid Nuur (born in Teheran in 1976) provides complex insight into his works, which are best described as 'interimodules'. While Nuur's practice shares affinities with Conceptual Art's understanding of the relationship between idea and form, his work often differentiates this rapport through the use of imagery, which serves as a poetic intermediary between form and concept. Nuur's pieces elicit both a reflective and an affective response, inviting the viewer to become 'a participant in an internal world'.

In an intelligent and ironic way San Keller (born in Berne in 1971) undermines conventional formats and makes institutional processes transparent. Alongside Pre-, Pre-, Pre-, Pre-, Preview the participatory performance Digestiv (Walk) additionally forms a parenthesis for the current exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum and critically engages with them. San Keller invites visitors to take a stroll with him around the forecourt after leaving the Kunsthalle Fridericianum to discuss Nuevos Ricos and THE VALUE OF VOID with him.


Carlos Amorales
Nuevos Ricos (in collaboration with Julian Léde)

With his large-scale exhibition project Nuevos Ricos, Carlos Amorales (born in Mexico City in 1970) is presenting an overview of this important and thematically interconnected artistic period for the first time. Amorales' œuvre includes performance, installation, drawing, animation and video. Back in 1999, the artist began his Liquid Archive. He initially set up this digital picture archive solely as a system for organising his pictorial material but subsequently developed it into an inexhaustible source of pictures and a central part of his oeuvre. His multifaceted work with this archive makes the artistic work not only immediately recognizable as a Carlos Amorales production, but also attests to the visual singularity of his art. In the form of a database the Liquid Archive serves as an artistic tool equipped with an immense pool of motifs and figures. In addition to the letters of the alphabet designed by Amorales in red and black colours, the archive contains a wealth of templates all of which contain nocturnal, dark, frightening aspects. With this figurative inventory, including hybrids, hermaphrodites, wolves, skulls and apes on their knees or creeping along, as well as insects, spiders, moths, birds, arid regions, fruitless trees and aircraft – modern birds – Carlos Amorales creates surreal, mythical, dark fantasy worlds which are analogous to horror films and thrillers – a dark parallel world to everyday existence.

At the end of the 1990s, when "Lucha Libre", a Mexican variant of wrestling, was particularly popular, Amorales made it into an artistic theme. Under the title Amorales vs. Amorales he staged performances and video works alluding to the theatricality and progression of "Lucha Libre". The fight between good and evil is a part of the spectacle, as is the interplay of the actors with the audience. Masking is especially important, allowing the "Luchadores", the actors in the ring, to hide their personal identity and to create a well-defined alter ego via masks and clothing. The investigation of personality as something individual, on the one hand, yet embedded in society on the other, and the constantly recurring battle between good and evil, interested Carlos Amorales as a subject of art.

With the work Flames Maquiladora (2001-2002), which is critical of globalisation and capitalism and which he staged in the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Carlos Amorales drew attention to the negative effects of exploitation in the maquiladora industry in Mexico. This attitude is continued in his project Nuevos Ricos, which is simultaneously a very successful alternative record label. Carlos Amorales founded the label together with the Mexican musician Julian Lede in 2003. By calling it Nuevos Ricos they not only draw attention to the extreme rise (and fall) of the nouveaux riches in Mexico, but put the latter in an ironic and provocative context. The record label Nuevos Ricos adheres to a principle that is unique in the label landscape: combining music with visual art and marketing the two together, with the purchaser not paying for the music but the art. As a label, Nuevos Ricos produces, among others, musicians whose works are not geared to the market and are far removed from the major labels.

Under the title Nuevos Ricos Carlos Amorales will present at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum Nuevos Ricos as an alternative record label in the form of documentation, performances, as an event platform and as a franchise shop. A complex collection of photos, texts, press commentaries, LPs and graphics will shed light on the project from different perspectives, addressing both the theme of franchising and critical franchise piracy. In addition, an abstractly reduced concert hall will be set up in the exhibition rooms, which apart from functioning as an artistic installation and artwork, will also offer space for live performances.

http://www.nuevosricos.com

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Navid Nuur
The value of void

Navid Nuur (born in Teheran in 1976) refers to his works as 'interimodules' and not sculptures or installations. In his view, the latter are too immobile and rigid to form the desired spatial and temporal link with their environment and the viewer. For the same reason, Nuur rejects the term 'site specific', which is often applied to his work. Instead, he choses the term 'interimodules' composed of the words 'interim' and 'module' to describe the envisaged intermediate area. With 'module' Navid Nuur draws a connection to his way of thinking and conceptualisation, while he uses the word 'interim' to allude to the space and the limited temporal period, thus highlighting above all the processual character of his works.

The relationship between the artistic concept and the form also plays a key role for him. While the form sometimes has to be subordinated to the conceptual idea, it is never only the result of it. Rather, the form develops through artistic specifications or rules in which, for Nuur, intuition is a decisive factor. The relatively simple structure of his works and the choice of virtually trivial materials, which are usually taken from everyday life, including wax, floral arrangement foam blocks, Polaroid photographs, food, a rubbish container and packaging materials, taken from past shows or from the museal institutions, are part of his artistic set of rules. In addition, Navid Nuur always closely links his works and their titles, thus stressing the context and the thematic statement. A graphic example of this is the work I am just an idea between the tape and the wall (2008), which consists of a piece of yellow adhesive tape attached to the wall whose title can be read on the back, in the area between the wall and the adhesive tape.

For his solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum Navid Nuur will present a comprehensive ensemble of his 'interimodules', which with their variety invite the viewer to delve into his artistic world of thought in the in-between realm. The works on view will include Vein of Venus II (2008), which concurrently focuses on the relation between a micro and a macro world. Let us meet inside you (2006-2009) is a work which Nuur redeveloped for THE VALUE OF VOID at the Fridericianum. The work originally consisted of a water dispenser, where a notebook, in which the words 'let us meet inside you' were written, was attached to the water tank by a belt of the artist. While looking through the water tank the words could be espied by the viewer. In Kassel this work will consist of a wall composed of 7000 water bottles in crates. These will be filled with Kassel water from a tap which in turn comes from Navid Nuur's studio. As a result, this work additionally takes on the character of a long-term performance. This wall stands across from a wall composed of floral arrangement foam blocks. At the top and on the outside edges, Navid Nuur puts dents with his own fingers in the material, thus he is leaving "more and more emotional marks on the rational block", according to the artist.

Furthermore, the work Citysoil and Tentacle Thought Nr. 5 will be on display. The neon piece Tentacle Thought was created in relation to Nuur's show in Berlin, and its moving to another venue depends on the special conditions of the exhibition space in the matter of light and material as the artist explains: "seeing light as a matter and not just as light, which can display an artwork better."

http://www.navidnuur.nl

THE VALUE OF VOID is realised in collaboration with S.M.A.K. in Ghent and De Hallen in Haarlem.

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As from 11 december 2009

San Keller
With the project Pre-, Pre-, Pre-, Pre-, Preview, San Keller (born in Bern in 1971) is making even the planning phase of his exhibition public. In doing so, he is undermining the boundaries of conventional formats and rendering institutional processes transparent. Visitors are directly incorporated in the process of development of his exhibition. He not only makes preparatory conversations between artist and curator Rein Wolfs in the conference room accessible to the public. Additionally, after they leave the Fridericianum San Keller invites visitors to take a stroll, which he calls Digestiv (Walk), with him around the forecourt of the Fridericianum to discuss the exhibitions by Carlos Amorales and Navid Nuur.

Events

Fri 11 December, 5 p.m.
Pre-, Pre-, Pre-, Pre-, Preview San Keller and Rein Wolfs
conference room, Dock 4, 2nd floor, Untere Karlstrasse 4, Kassel

Sat 12 und Sun 13 December, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Digestiv (Walk) San Keller, Friedrichsplatz, Kassel

The book Frühling by Pawel Althamer & Kids has been published by Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Rein Wolfs and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König on the occasion of the exhibition earlier this year.
Hardcover, German-English edition, 96 pages, ca. 160 colour images, ISBN 978-3-86560-725-6, € 29,80

Image: Carlos Amorales, Nuevos Ricos (in collaboration with Julian Léde), 2009. Courtesy: the artist, Yvon Lambert, Paris, New York and kurimanzutto, Mexico City

Press contact:
Christine Messerschmidt Communication
Tel. +49 561 7072786 Fax +49 561 7072775 press@fridericianum-kassel.de

Fri 4 December
7 p.m. Opening with Live-Performance Carlos Amorales and Julian Léde
11 p.m. Party with Special Guest Silverio (Nuevos Ricos), Galerie Loyal, Kassel

Kunsthalle Fridericianum
Friedrichsplatz 18 D-34117 Kassel
Opening hours: Wednesday to Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Admissions
normal: 5 €
reduced: 3 €

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