Michaela Meise chia-wei hsu Open studiOs

Berlin, 14th November 2014
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to invite you to the opening of the following exhibitions:
Falkenrot Prize 2014
Michaela Meise
In the exhibition cabinet: Ar tworks by Kate Diehn-Bitt
(1900–1978)
Chia-wei Hsu
On the Margin of Places
Open Studios
of the ar tists in the International Studio Programme
November 19, 2014, 7 – 10 pm
Joint opening: Wednesday, 19th November 2014, from 7 PM
Showroom at Kottbusser Straße 10
Exhibitions:
20th November – 14th December 2014
Tuesday – Sunday, 2 – 7 pm
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Initiated in 2005, the Falkenrot Prize is being presented for the eighth time this year. It is conferred
upon contemporary international artists whose outstanding self-awareness is destined to establish new
standards and reset media boundaries.
The Falkenrot Prize 2014 has been awarded to the artist Michaela Meise, who lives in Berlin.
As in previous years, it encompasses the presentation of a comprehensive show of work by the respective
winner at Künstlerhaus Bethanien.
Former Falkenrot prize-winners have been: Maki Na Kamura, Sławomir Elsner, Tony Matelli, Torben Giehler,
Sven Drühl, Maik Wolf, Seo.
Michaela Meise's sculptures and objects, which the artist usually presents in the context of installations,
examine aspects and states of the precarious and instable, operating at both the architectonic-constructive
and the political and social levels. Besides her primary work as a fine artist, Meise is also active in the field
of music. Her musical projects have included the recording of the album Songs of Nico (2005, with Sergej
Jensen), guest appearances as a singer with Phantom/Ghost and Tocotronic, and her solo album Preis dem
Todesüberwinder (2011), a new interpretation of historical church songs from the 16th to 19th centuries.
In her exhibition for the Falkenrot Prize 2014 Meise is showing a newly produced series of works in
Künstlerhaus Bethanien – ceramic portraits of mothers, to which she was inspired in exchanges with
other artists and through her own interest in the theses of feminist psychoanalyst and cultural theorist,
Luce Irigaray (*1930): "I began with the portrait of my own mother, working entirely from my memory and
imagination. To my surprise the face that emerged seems to be quite close, as if bending down over me.
There were also small scenes at the edge, showing how my mother played out in the streets with other
children as a child, as well as an aerial photo of the war-devastated city in which she grew up, and lavender,
which she loves so much. Rather than her name, I had inscribed "my mum" into the clay." (M. Meise)
The other portraits of the series also sprang from the artist's imagination and were inspired by conversations
she had with other daughters and, in one case, with a son. Without actually being aware of these 'strange'
mothers' appearance, Meise had their children describe all sorts of optical details from memory: their hair,
the shape of their eyes, the condition of their skin, but also some personal interests and biographical facts.
Meise wrote down her conversations with those she approached and later modelled the ceramic portraits
in her studio on the basis of these records, with the aid of artistic imagination and intuition. Every portrait
bears the first name of the mother portrayed as its title.
This exhibition by Michaela Meise is supplemented with selected works by painter Kate Diehn-Bitt
(1900–1978), who – initially influenced by Otto Dix and New Objectivity – developed a completely unique
and unconventional pictorial language, which was only rediscovered a quarter of a century after the artist's
death, finally receiving the acclaim it deserved. Meise has made a thorough investigation into the work of
Kate Diehn-Bitt and rates it extremely highly. In the exhibition it is also possible to see Meise's work DiehnBitt Frieze.
We would like to thank the lenders Inge Jastram, Marlow; Johann König, Berlin; Kunsthalle Rostock; Ursula
Schael, Rostock; Staatliches Museum Schwerin/ Ludwigslust/ Güstrow; STANDARD, Oslo for enabling us to
the exhibition in Künstlerhaus Bethanien. Particular thanks are due to Michael Schultz, Berlin.
With kind support from the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs.
To mark the presentation of the Falkenrot Prize 2014 to Michaela Meise, Künstlerhaus Bethanien will be
publishing a catalogue, including an essay by Dan Adler (Design: Anna Voswinckel).
Michaela Meise (*1976) lives and works in Berlin. She studied with Urs Lüthi at the College of Fine Art
in Kassel and with Ayse Erkmen at the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main. Exhibitions (selection): The Sick
Book, Dépendance, Brussels (solo exhibition, 2014); Im Kreis, am Kreis, Johann König, Berlin; Recent Works,
Standard, Oslo; Money Faces, Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles (solo exhibitions, 2013); Ambiguität
& Ambivalenz, Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg; No Such Thing As History: Four Collections and One Artist,
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Louis Vuitton, Espace Culturel, Munich; Die Antwort der Dinge, Lothringer 13 Halle, Munich (exhibition
participation, 2014). Current: @theshrink, group exhibition, Shanaynay, Paris (24.10. – 24.11.2014); Kontakt
Sappho, performance and concert with Sonja Cvitkovic, Birgit Megerle, Marine Drouan, Berghain Kantine,
Berlin, 15th November 2014. www.michaelameise.com
Chia-Wei hSU
Chia-Wei Hsu's artistic approach is characterised by the creation of special 'narratives', film documentations, into which he incorporates site-specific characteristics, history, and also myths and legends from
the collective memory of the inhabitants of the place in question.
More recently, Hsu has been focusing his research primarily on the effects of the Second World War and the
Cold War in Asia, as observed apart from the 'great' events of history. In his works he interweaves reality and
illusion, legends, the past and the present, by developing the stories of people and events above and beyond
the perspective of history's official narrative. Hsu develops his works from an anthropological starting
point. The artist's meticulous and extensive advance research on the places in which his films are made
discloses the large extent to which the past's multilayered structures still influence those people living there
today. For example, two of Hsu's short films are concerned with different aspects of the legend of a frog
deity called "Marshal Tie Jia", whose very ancient temple on the Chinese mainland was destroyed during
the Cultural Revolution; a special temple for the very same god was consecrated on a tiny island belonging
to today's Taiwan, which was forced to make way in its turn for a bunker following Chiang Kai-shek's
withdrawal to Taiwan, and was rebuilt on a neighbouring island. There, Tie Jia is still revered today, and his
advice is sought in all important matters with the help of an oracle – a ritual documented by Hsu, and one to
which he was also obliged to subject himself in the course of his research.
To clarify the complex factual and fictive contexts that Hsu addresses in his total of five films being shown
in Künstlerhaus Bethanien, the artist has assembled a brochure for visitors as an integral component of the
exhibition; on the basis of sketched maps, charts and text passages, in this booklet he visualises the ‘stories
inside history’ that he has taken up.
One key aim in all Chia-Wei Hsu's works is the translation of the languages of contemporary art and film
into a mythical narrative form somewhere between fiction and reality, a form capable of carrying art out of
the museum context into people's everyday lives. In this sense Hsu always understands his film work as an
action, which would not be conceivable without the participation of the local people and their own stories.
Chia-Wei Hsu, born in Taichung, Taiwan in 1983, lives and works in Taipei. Artistic education at the
Graduate School of Plastic Art, National Taiwan University of Arts. In 2010, participation in the International
Studio & Curatorial Program ( ISCP), New York.
Hsu's works have already been seen frequently in an international context, incl. in the Jeu de Paume, Paris,
at the 39th International Film Festival Rotterdam, the 55th Venice Biennale, the Liverpool Biennale (2012),
the Reina Sofia National Museum Madrid, and in the context of the Rencontres Internationales Paris/ Berlin/
Madrid, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
Chia-Wei Hsu is currently receiving a grant from the Ministry of Culture, R.O.C. (Taiwan) in the context
of our International Studio Programme. His stay in Berlin is also being supported generously by the
representation of Taipei in the Federal Republic of Germany.
More info on the artist: www. hsuchiawei01.blogspot.com
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