Berlin, 23rd September 2014 Dear Colleagues, we are pleased to invite you to the opening of the following exhibitions: Masashi Echigo All is fish that comes to the net Priscila Fernandes Against the Enamel Emma Waltraud Howes Ankyloglossia (n. tongue-tie) ROn Tran A project by Ron Tran with Nicola Fontaine, Sabine Gottfried, Emma Howes, Trevor Lee Larson, Andrew Moss, Susan Ploetz, Repossession Ser vices, Christian Tonner, the unknowns. Joint Opening: Thursday, 9TH OCTOBER 2014, 7 – 10 pm Showroom at Kottbusser Straße 10 Exhibitions: 10th OCTOBER – 2ND NOVEMBER Tuesday – Sunday, 2 – 7 pm Entrance free Page 1 Masashi Echigo The foundation of Masashi Echigo's work are intermittent interactions with other individuals and groups of society. His artistic practice is based on travelling in particular, as well as on the temporary sharing or borrowing of things as an attempt to open up to others and simultaneously participate in their lives. The insights from these processes flow into Echigo's objects, photographs and installations, which are linked spatially and ideally to the context of the relevant place. In 2013 Echigo lived mainly on Shodoshima, an island situated three hours by ferry from the Japanese metropolis, Kansai. By contrast to the internationality of the Berlin scene, there the artist encountered an almost exclusively indigenous community and found that a number of Japanese ‘emigrants’ lived on the island – entire families who had left behind their old lives and sometimes promising careers in face of the devastating earthquake of March 2011 and the nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima, their only aim being to live in security, far away from any danger. The realisation that here, he could observe a reversal of the migration trend from the countryside to the city from the end of the Second World War onwards – also going hand in hand with a change in values that is giving preference to human values such as a sense of belonging, safety and community before material values – inspired Echigo to create his work All is fish that comes to the net. In this he places a series of photos that he took on Shodoshima in direct reference to scenes from Yasujiro Ozu's film Tokyo Story dating from 1953. The film tells the story of an older married couple visiting their children who have emigrated to the city, and sheds a new light on concepts such as family and notions of happiness and satisfaction before the background of the post-war era in Japan with its economic boom, flight from the countryside and growing individualism. In addition, Echigo presents a large-format installation, which refers to the theme of fishing. All is fish that comes to the net was realised in collaboration with the artist and designer Osamu Inami (*1980, Japan), who lives in Berlin. MASASHI ECHIGO, born in Toyama, Japan in 1982; lives and works in Berlin and on the island of Shodoshima, Japan. Study of architecture at Musashino Art University, Tokyo and of fine art at the HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts) in Ghent, Belgium. Exhibitions incl.: Setouchi Triennale, Japan (2013); On sharing: you is you, Gallery Geukens & De Vil, Antwerp, Belgium (2012) and Public sharing of private monopoly, Jogjalaluta National Museum, Jogyakarta, Indonesia (2012). Masashi Echigo is currently participating in the International Studio Programme at Künstlerhaus Bethanien. www.masashiechigo.com PRISCILA FERNANDES Priscila Fernandes develops her works from an interest into didactics, education and the conveyance of knowledge. Working across a variety of mediums from drawing to sound and video installations, Fernandes focuses on ideologies associated with play, creativity and productivity as tools for the construction of the individual and society. In Against the Enamel Fernandes presents an installation incorporating video and sculpture. As in other currents works, Fernandes creates references to Neo-Impressionism and ideological shifts at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The large LED video screen hanging from the ceiling, with its movement and multi-colours generating a veritable maelstrom, creates – in interplay with the rough cast iron sculptures placed on the floor – associations with advancing industrialisation and a changing social structure, the idea of productivity, scientific progress, the masses' longing for entertainment and also for anarchic utopias. The video and the title of the exhibition refers to a portrait from 1890 by the painter Paul Signac of French anarchist and art critic Félix Fénéon. Signac was one of the most important artists of Neo-Impressionism, whose defining characteristic was experimentation with systematic brush strokes of a colour palette based on optical theories – a technique whereby the whole image emerges not on the canvas but only from a certain distance, in the eye of the beholder. Fernandes fascination for Neo-Impressionism lies not only on it’s visual language, but on how such an aesthetic gesture was intended to inspire a revolution. Page 2 PRISCILA FERNANDES, born in Coimbra, Portugal, in 1981, lives and works in Rotterdam. She graduated from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (MFA) and the National College of Art & Design in Dublin. She is currently receiving a fellowship from the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon and is a guest at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in the context of our International Studio Programme. As a work for her current exhibition in Espai 13 at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, she has recently published the book ¿Y el Arte? The Book of Aesthetic Education of the Modern School. www.priscilafernandes.net EMMA WALTRAUD HOWES Emma Waltraud Howes integrates movement, objects, drawing and collage, video and sound into live performances and installations, whereby one emphasis of her research is on the extendibility of media boundaries. Howes’ projects are influenced by her intense interest in absurd theatre and her personal training in the fields of dance, performance theory and fine art. Her works often take the form of choreographed arrangements of bodies. In this process both physical bodies and simple objects become 'performers' – independent 'subjects', which Howes stages in such a way that they make an abandonment of the apparently immovable opposition between body and spirit seem credible. Howes' exhibition Ankyloglossia (n. tongue-tie) is a new performance-installation encompassing a number of works; it takes its inspiration from substantial performing works by Samuel Beckett, Yvonne Rainer and Robert Morris. In search of new forms of expression, Howes experiments with various perspectives on the gestural, non-semantic linguistic forms of our age. The work Ankyloglossia (n. tongue-tie), shown as a projection, is an adapted choreography for eight performers; they are dressed in black and move in front of a black background, so that only single, uncovered parts of the body emerge from the darkness, apparently trying to find their part in one great whole by means of a ghostly ballet. In the lower exhibition space we find Stage Directions for a Mouth, a video projected onto the window of the gallery room: an oversized, isolated mouth makes every possible effort to articulate analogue to a true cacophony of noises, while the sounds of an imaginary audience running up and down wooden steps mingles with a protest-laden clanging, in the audio work Ram-tam-tam! Rat-a-tat-tat!, which emanates from a cooking-pot sculpture placed in the space. In the context of the exhibition Howes will also present the recently published artist's book Ankyloglossia (n. tongue-tie) for the first time. With its compiled notes and sketches, diagrams and choreographic scores, this represents an extension of the installation of the same name in Künstlerhaus Bethanien. EMMA WALTRAUD HOWES lives and works in Berlin. After training in dance and choreography, she studied fine art at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver (BFA) and Concordia University, Montreal. Exhibitions incl.: Dare-Dare, 3e imperial (Montreal, solo), The Nunnery (London), Joyce Soho (NYC), Bauhaus Festival (Jena), Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt Art IT (Berlin). Emma Waltraud Howes is receiving a fellowship from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Ministère des Relations internationales du Québec in the context of our International Studio Programme. www. www.emmawaltraudhowes.com RON TRAN Ron Tran's artistic practice is interdisciplinary - expressed in both performances and interventions as well as in sculpture, video and photography. Tran's works tend towards the ephemeral and are located to equal degrees in the viewer's imagination and in artistic expression. The project Apartment #201 (2008) is exemplary of Tran's working concept; for this, the artist had the door to his apartment removed and exhibited in a gallery, while the apartment remained unlocked: a demonstrative farewell to the protective cocoon and conscious exposure of the self – to Page 3 the risks but also to the opportunities and encounters of 'true' reality. Using his particular method Tran wishes to break open socially sanctioned routines and social rituals and so point out new chances and possible encounters between people. In the context of the project Walking Strangers Home, for example, he spoke to strangers on the street and offered to accompany them home – which led to a wide range of responses from harsh rejection or incomprehension to delight – reactions which Tran, for his part, leaves without further comment. In his own words, the artist sees himself primarily as a "collector of experiences ". In the context of his presentation in Künstlerhaus Bethanien Tran uses the exhibition space allocated to him for a participatory project, which offers to his guests – various people he got to know on a number of different occasions in Berlin – the opportunity and the concrete space to reflect upon their skills and the activities they practise, some as a hobby and some as a profession, within the framework of a museum; here, they introduce them to visitors in the form of specific offers. Things on offer vary as widely as yoga, dancing lessons for children, and "re-purchasing services", but also include experimental meals and musical recording techniques. RON TRAN, geboren 1972 in Saigon, Vietnam, lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. He studied Integrated Media Arts at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Exhibitions incl. Soleil politique, Museion, Bolzano, Italy (27.9.2014 – 11.1.2015); Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2012); Away To Go, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2011); It Knows Not What It Is, Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2011); 6th Berlin Biennale, Berlin (2010). Ron Tran is currently receiving a fellowship from Canada Council for the Arts and the Embassy of Canada, Berlin in the context of our International Studio Programme. Page 4
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