Tomás Saraceno, Cloud Cities, installation view, image courtesy Berlin Art Link

This winter the Hamburger Bahnhof’s exhibitions are (mostly) devoted to artists influenced by utopian architecture, a decision made to coincide with Tomás Saraceno’s Cloud Cities, an investigation into sustainable living that borrows heavily from the language of visionary architects and futurists like Buckminster Fuller.

Saraceno’s “biospheres” are fun, enormous and inviting, with long lines of art-goers waiting for a moment of awkward repose over the Bahnhof’s hangar.  They allude to the plasticity of our “futures” (Saraceno prefers the plural) but they also seem kind of garish, like giant floaties at an eighties-themed pool party in West Hollywood.

When compared to Saraceno’s epic balloon opera, the drawings and models of early German modernist architects like Bruno Taut and Hanzel Weblik are pleasingly modest.  These are displayed downstairs, in small dark alcoves as part of the sprawling Architektonika exhibition.

Architektonika offers up a few real gems, among them Dieter Roth’s scrappy and feral Gartenskulptur, a garden-environment-installation that was added to, catalogued and maintained for thirty years by the artist and his son. Then there are photographs and remnants of Gordon Matta Clark’s 1977 Office Baroque in which the artist sliced open a building in Antwerp and created a teardrop shaped hole in the façade (which was slated for destruction).  The result emits a bodily pathos unusual for the inanimate.

Paul Laffoley, The Orgone Motor, 1981, courtesy of Kent Fine Art, New York

Upstairs Paul Laffoley offers his take on utopia as part of the Hamburger Bahnhof’s new Secret Universe series.  I’m really excited about this exhibition series, which will last for three years and focus on visionary artists whose multi-disciplinary practices may have been overlooked by the larger art community.  Finally, we can see what the weird uncles of the art world are up to.

Laffoley is a former architect who merges Eastern religious dogma, Futurism (among many other “isms”) and Carl Jung into intensely weird diagrammatic paintings.  His aims are lofty, and he seeks to illustrate complex imaginary systems like time travel, the fifth dimension and “Absolute Life.”

Laffoley, an artist devoted to the possibilities of other worlds spent many years making these paintings in a one-bedroom apartment he dubbed “The Boston Visionary Cell.”   Mandala-like, they aspire to a kind of “utopic space” with their own visual hierarchy.

In a lecture given in 2001, Laffoley stated about his mission to explore utopic space:

I have developed this task by means of symbols, perhaps the only way an individual can approach such a project. Real symbols move the mind up to and through metaphor and finally beyond to a semiotic state that has never been successfully named.

Laffoley goes on to claim that the concept of utopic space should serve “as a neutral sounding board for all attempts at plumbing or prophesying the future.” His paintings are filled with repetitive symbols including eyes, circles, stars, outstretched hands multicolored rays.  In another context, this could be a Bikram Yoga invite hidden underneath a windshield.  But with Laffoley, these symbols read as sincere parts of a dense personal lexicon.

Laffoley offers the occasional autobiographical nod, charting his lucid dreams in black and white panels, in one recounting sticking his finger into someone’s “soft eye.”

Paul Laffoley, The Renovatio Mundi, 1977, courtesy Kent Fine Art

He offers advice culled from Eastern ideas of non-resistance in vinyl letters, claiming that “All suffering is the separation of boredom and care.” His works are taped off, crisp and obsessive, but possess a kind of sympathetic craziness, like Laffoley isn’t being intentionally obtuse, he’s just your everyday Shaman, trying to spare you psychic pain.

Presenting a less utopian vision of the future is the neighboring National Gallery Prize for Young Art, exhibition, which shows the work of the four artists who competed for Germany’s annual 50,000 euro award.

Cyprien Gaillard, Artefact, film still 2011, courtesy Sprueth Magers Gallery

This year, the prize went to French artist Cyprien Gaillard, a headline-grabber who moves between mediums like beer and neon.  At the Hamburger Bahnhof Gaillard shows the more nuanced “Artefacts,” a slow moving cinematic collage of contemporary Iraq, which weaves together tropes of Babylonian antiquity and American militarism.  Gaillard lingers both on the famed Ishtar Gate as well as soldiers shooting green lasers into a receding desert.  The film was shot originally on Gaillards’ Iphone, but was transferred later to 35 mm, creating an anachronistic loop, which is reinforced by the repeating phrase “Babylon,” from the David Grey song.

Klara Lidén, a beloved Berlin artist whose urban interventions, sculpture and performative acts are usually so sharp, offers up a lackluster contribution in the name of institutional critique. Liden presents a video of herself climbing into a trash can, set to the tune of “Helpless” as well as a manicured hedge at the museum’s entrance in the shape of a dumpster.

Andro Wekua’s film and adjoining installation are more ambitious, but rely too heavily on saturated colors and the tropes of surrealism.

Kitty Kraus is the only artist to eschew video, but her kinetic sculptures share a sequential and rhythmic similarity to film nonetheless.  The pieces, like minimal metal characters, are forged from found handles and made in reference to the guillotine.  They seem dangerous and unhinged (literally).  Kraus’ work questions the way we move in the world with austere and poetic precision.

Theo Solnik, Anna Pavlova Lives in Berlin, film still, 2011, courtesy of the artist

A new addition this year is the National Gallery Prize for Young Film-Art.  The winning film Anna Pavlova Lives in Berlin by Theo Solnik is an enthralling black and white character study of a party girl whose exploits in Kreuzberg seem more elegiac than depraved.  Through drugs, alcohol and sex, Anna Pavlova clouds her own reality, creating a romantic vision of herself and the world.

Amy Sillman, Installation View "Thumb Cinema," courtesy Capitain Petzel, 2011

Amy Sillman’s new suite of paintings at Capitain Petzel are large and spatial, with an airiness well-suited to the glass paneled façade of her new Berlin gallery. Sillman’s latest canvasses still have the brute gestural force of a paint-conjured “id,” but also possess a kind of nimbleness and play alluded to in the exhibition’s title, Thumb Cinema.  Her palette is quiet, with lavender and forest greens evoking visions of British dales and naked Roccoco picnics.  A sense of solidity rarely appears in these works, replaced instead by misty shapes and raucous lines, which recall the rhythmic playfulness of Kandinsky or Mondrian.

The comic (in both senses of the word) aspects of Sillman’s paintings are belied by the massive size and scope of their Abstract Expressionist roots.  Sillman’s work is made more powerful because it diminishes the self-seriousness of AbEx, instead extolling the sensual, personal and indulgent mark.

Sillman gestures coyly towards the monolith of man-painting by digitally altering a Nancy cartoon for her exhibition poster.  In the cartoon we watch as the loveable girl scamp discovers a painter in the heady process of CREATING and then, duly impressed, offers him some (rather phallic) candy through a hole in the wall.

Although Sillman’s paintings sometimes read as the residue of an instinct-driven process, she is clearly an able draftsman who investigates the immediacy of mark with informed skill, giving primacy to whatever instrument she has on hand.  She underlines these corporeal interests by giving the paintings titles like TEETH and MOUTH among others.

The sensualized mark-as-body idea is made literal with three charcoal drawings that are more direct in their headless, mirrored figuration and recall Primitivist interpretations of the female form.  There is a brutality to these untitled works which, when taken with the pieces downstairs form a larger historical riff on the tropes of modernism.

Amy Sillman, Installation View "Thumb Cinema," courtesy Capitain Petzel, 2011

Alongside her paintings and charcoal drawings, Sillman presents a new animation titled Pinky’s Rule along with a room full of printed stills, specified to be sold only for the price required to make them; 43 dollars.  In recent shows Sillman has displayed zines, posters and CDs with her paintings, offering up a democratic gesture that implicitly contradicts the idea of painting as luxury totem.

Sillman’s animation, made on her iPhone is a departure in medium if not in visual language.  The stills from Pinky’s Rule are arrayed across a back room, covering almost all of the available wall space and blanketing the viewer in double bodies, eyes and orifices, blooming and spewing with joyous pixelated abandon and completing a pleasure-centric vision that feels whole and exciting.

In Nordkreuz (“Northern Cross”), Berlin-based street artist EVOL has created a miniature, underground city in the fields of Hamburg, Germany. The installation — which took him eight days to complete — found the artist outside of his typical urban environment, digging into a picturesque meadow to create a grid that viewers could actually walk through. The buildings’ compound-like, grey facade provides a striking contrast to the scenic surroundings, complete with dirt “roads.”

Check out the making-of the installation and the artist’s other work here.

Alec Soth, 2008_02zL0189 (leprechaun man), 2008, Edition of 7 + 3 AP, Archival pigment print, 40,6 cm x 50,8 cm / 16 x 20 inches, Courtesy Loock Galerie, Berlin

The images make these men and their more basic living situations heroic. One man, depicted with religious garb and standing among a thicket of trees, becomes a nobleman in search of a purer way of life to get closer to god. Another, of 2007_10zL0006 (I love my Dad), seen only through his impact on his ramshackle house, appears to have gone on a self-prescribed psychological retreat to assess his familiar relations without burdening others with his problems. A survivalist to be sure, one’s new accommodations consist of a blanket on the ground and jerry-rigged electricity overhead. Simple living at its best…?

Alec Soth, 2007_10zL0006 (I love my Dad), 2007, Edition of 7 + 3 AP, Archival pigment print, 101,6 cm x 127 cm / 50 x 40 inches, Courtesy Loock Galerie, Berlin

What reinforces the show’s conceptual ideas is how Soth has aligned his process accordingly. Traditionally, there are certain formal rules about how a photograph should be displayed. Standardizing decisions such as matting, framing, processing techniques, and scale across an entire show can formally tie images together quite easily, but limits the ability of each individual image to speak for itself, within and without the show. Soth, however, has subverted these common notions about Photography to some extent, by considering what presentation techniques best serve each photo within the show’s larger narrative.

Variety in colour, saturation and lighting elicit emotional connections with the subjects of each image. Some are sombre and reflective, or matter-of-factly objective while others have a hint of the fantastic. One can see, throughout the show, the deliberateness of Soth’s artistic choices in conveying the notion that it is important to ask why and take agency of our own situations rather than follow the path that some faceless majority has established as “the way”.

Alec Soth, 2007_05zL0059 (Edsel's stick), 2007, Edition of 7 + 3 AP, Archival pigment print, 76,2 cm x 61 cm / 24 x 30 inches, Courtesy Loock Galerie, Berlin

Where this is most apparent is with his black and white images of objects, such as 2007_05zL0059 (Edsel’s stick). The presentation of these objects transforms them into relics or historical documents, and angle Soth as some sort of anthropologist, respectfully investigating these subjects and their alternative lifestyles. At first glance, they may seem out of place in a room full of picturesque vistas and men with little facial expression. Without them, however, Soth’s position may appear somewhat exploitative or voyeuristic, and may prevent the viewer from experiencing reverence for the subjects. It is in this manner that Soth has sculpted the narrative of exhibition into complex reflections on life and managed to engage in and question the common practices of the medium he employs.

On view at Loock Galerie until July 23, 2011.

Oliver Laric, CEO (Installation shot), 2011, Courtesy of Based in Berlin

The international image of Berlin is nowhere more visible than in the city’s restaurant industry. Eat-in restaurants commonly seem to lack a speciality in-lieu of offering upwards of 200 items  from around the globe; Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, American and of course traditional German all in one spot. Supply constraints, because of kitchen economics and Berlin’s geographic location limit ingredient availability and often result in diluted and deluded versions of what should be. Because they try to replicate several foreign cultures all at once, these restaurants produce nothing authentically. It’s as if they have all the recipes, but substitute readily available ingredients for the harder to find items.

Is that what Berlin culture at-large has become: other cultures with Germany filling in the blanks when necessary? Surely one should be able to look to the community’s art to be at least representative of the culture, if not be the culture. Berlin’s reputation for art itself has led to this continual migration of artists searching for something in the city to aid in their process (whether it’s cheap rent, inspiration, connections, etc.). The result may mean learning from mentors that were new immigrants themselves no more than five years ago. Looking at the biographies of the artists presented here, most are foreign born, few are from Germany, and fewer still call Berlin their hometown. It’s as if there was a big empty space where all of the artists just decided to meet up, and in some utopian fantasy dreamed up the Berlin art scene… almost. Without responding to the city itself, artists are left trying to find their identity through something that can’t be defined. The focus here seems to be not on embedding oneself in a culture, but instead being one who helps define it.

Erik Bünger, The Allens, 2004, Video installation, Courtesy the artist, Photo: Erik Bünger

Pieces like Erik Bünger’s The Allens, 2004, illustrate this image of Berlin. Putting on the headphones and listening to Woody Allen give a monologue, every next word translated into another language, is much like navigating the city. It’s impossible to follow all of the conversations, but hearing the variety of languages is inescapable. All of these cultures are being filtered through one figurehead, one of the most imitated and parodied celebrities in Western culture. Allen iconic voice and way of talking is stripped away as the words are spit out inorganically to reassemble the original text, leaving only glimmers of the original English speech.

Because, by and large, the artists are at least somewhat outsiders, is this show just a coincidental collection of work that could have just as easily been ‘The Studio Complex Group Show’ on 123 Fake St. in Anytown, Earth? The pitfall with defining one’s own culture in a white cube called Berlin, is that it makes culture, by negating Berlin’s entire history, irrelevant, and thus makes any attempts at cultural creation also irrelevant. When there is no real focus on preservation of local culture in the contemporary art of a place with hundreds of years of internationally impacting history, artists create their own problems instead of dealing with the problems already present in society. Moving to Berlin changes to moving to any foreign land and dealing with a new life situation. Understanding one’s existence in Berlin, with reference to the historical boundaries, navigational limits and cultural differences between adjacent neighbourhoods becomes understanding one’s existence in either a global sense, or a completely personal sense. It makes me wonder to what extent the art community in Berlin speaks to the multi-generational locals, or if there are two co-existent but mutually exclusive culture systems in Berlin.

Matthias Fritsch, Replace:Technoviking, 2011, Video still, Copyleft by, Courtesy of the artist

Matthias Fritsch’s We, Technoviking, 2011, a video that is situated partly at Berlin’s Fuckparade, manages to drift between the local and the global. The original footage named Kneecam No.1, a popular internet meme, is both silly and startling; the technoviking is serious about fun, and protection. Social order is maintained by this super hero-type figure in what one would expect to be a festival that seems almost created to get out of hand. We, Technoviking compiles Youtube posted response videos inspired by the technoviking video and blurs the line between what is unique to Berlin and what is common around the world. The incredible international popularity of the footage has inspired an archive and exhibition that decentralizes the original event and relocates it in college dormitories, parks, and anywhere else. The nature of this video questions the authenticity of the event itself; no longer a unique experience in time and place. Everything is everywhere, there is no here.

Critiquing consumption may have been one of the bigger trends at Based in Berlin this year. Certainly, it’s something that most of us in industrialized society have conflicting feelings about. While I guess it’s nice to know that artists here are thinking about it, pieces like Rocco Berger’s Oil Painting, 2010, would have read the same in any Western star city and doesn’t benefit from being placed in a show that presumably wants to link the artists and city through the cultural production of art.

Rocco Berger, Wir müssen ins Detail gehen, 2009, Motoren, Holz ,Förderband (recycled), Galerie Alte Schule

It’s hard, as an outsider without local knowledge, to comment on Berlin’s body social with any sort of reference for local culture in Berlin. Instead it’s the popular culture that provides a skimming/surveying of what Berlin is with information that is at this point cliche (namely regarding Nazism and The Wall). Only the simplified, tourist-version to what are extremely complicated issues is accessible and therefore may get overlooked in-lieu of pursuing more self-centered subject matter. At its worst, it’s taking what the artist inherently has as the base of the meal, shaking in a few splashes of Wurze, and calling it Berliner art, and may be rightly feared by the immigrant artist. But this ignorance of the local is what is continually obfuscating the culture further and pushing it evermore so out of reach. As artists continue to produce with focus on the personal and the global, lack of identity becomes identity. Berlin may not be the only city faced with this issue, but it seems to be a brilliant example of the results of urban gentrification.

This discussion exists for me in Oliver Laric’s installation, CEO, 2011. One must climb up a temporary structure to view three SUVs sitting on a constructed roof with a vantage of some of the most iconic buildings of Berlin. At once it discusses global concerns of corporatism, consumption, waste and the environment, and contextualizes it amongst the history of the city. It addresses the disconnect between our daily lives and feeling any sort of connection to the locale beyond the personal. While the focus on multiculturalism and globalization may be positive directives at times, local culture and values still exist in large cities and continue to inform the cultural production of places like Berlin. By art culture diverging from Berlin’s local culture, two separate cities will form within one space, and art will further obscure itself from general society. Without local knowledge, opinion and input, any attempt at producing an authentic culture will come off tasting like a kidney bean burrito.

Santiago Sierra, Audience Lit by a Petrol Operated Generator, 2008; Veteran Standing in the Corner, 2011, Courtesy of KOW Berlin

Like a newspaper in its matter of fact presentation of content, Cady Noland / Santiago Sierra at KOW Berlin, curated by Alexander Koch and Nikolaus Oberhuber, appears purposefully removed of emotion. We never make eye contact with other humans, backs are often turned, or we find ourselves averting our eyes for our own protection.  We stand on the outside looking in. No one makes a human gesture towards us as viewers; our presence is not acknowledged or regarded with any sort of value. Just as we may be blind to other’s suffering, we are made invisible and unimportant.

Sierra’s video, Burned Buildings (Found Scene) (2008), starts with a hectic, first-person shot approaching a fire. We hear sirens, and see the unsteadiness of the handheld camcorder. We arrive behind a wall—shielding our view of the actual building—the camera is set down, and the video transforms into a contemplative, moving grisaille of smoke in the wind.  Any standard journalistic questions linger and remain unanswered.

Santiago Sierra, Burned Builings (Found Scene), Via Argine, Ponticelli, Naples, Italy, June 2008. Video 5'35", Courtesy of Santiago Sierra and KOW BERLIN, Photo by Alexander Koch.

Monochromatic in its curation, the visual aesthetic of the show easily captivates. This is a purposeful distraction. If we just look at the pictures without bothering to read the story, we don’t need to concern ourselves with the reality of the situations presented. Considering how many images and texts present themselves to us each day, disregarding most of them may be the best coping mechanism for fulfilling our day-to-day tasks and pursuing our own lives.

Santiago Sierra, Teeth of the Last Gipsies of Ponticelli, 2008. Courtesy of Santiago Sierra and KOW BERLIN, Photo by Alexander Koch

It is difficult, however, not to be struck by two of Sierra’s photographs, Teeth of the Last Gipsies of Ponticelli (2008). Two open mouths of teeth, ground down and deformed, give evidence of the psychological stress and physical condition of the sitters. They are both captivating and devastating in their spectacle. The time-intensive process of wearing teeth down so severely brings more questions than emotional concern. Awareness of this state implicates the viewer as partial perpetrator, despite the victim being foreign and obtuse.

Violence is an ever-present undercurrent of the show, and is most overt in Noland’s piece, Enquirer with Eyes Cut Out (1990). The removal of the image’s eyes points to a sort of Hollywood version of psychopathy. The type of story presented, involving the private lives of celebrities, exists in our culture not for its importance or affect on society at large, but rather to knock down people above us in the social hierarchy. Celebrity ‘rag mags’ seem to exist solely for this eventual purpose. Removing the eyes dehumanizes, and by taking away a celebrity’s humanity, we are able to freely violate and judge them, therefore purposefully making ourselves the offenders to their victimhood.

Cady Noland, Enquirer Page with Eyes Cut Out, 1990 , Courtesy of Sammlung Gaby and Wilhelm Shuermann, Photo by Alexander Koch.

We’ve all heard stories of exploitation, just as we’ve all at times chosen not to act or to rebel against various human atrocities. Seeing documentation of this, be it in a paper, or on a gallery’s walls, allows us distance and freedom from any sense of responsibility. The content of the show, however, remains commonplace. It’s delivered to us daily in our mailboxes, or is readily available at the corner newsstand. In 89 Huichols, Sierra highlights particular examples from our world that act as stand-ins for the marginalized figures that give regular society its “other” of the moment. Coupled with Noland’s work, the curators have moved us from the Sierra conversation “Why would he do that?” to “Why do we allow this?” The stories Sierra covers here don’t get a lot of news time when contrasted against Jaclyn Smith’s divorce, due to a lack of interest from the general public. This sentiment is subtle, but apparent throughout the exhibition.

There is a detached quality between both Noland and Sierra and their work.  They’re no Sarah McLaughlin, who appeals to our emotions to garner donations for abused animals. Instead, Coland and Sierra offer fodder for intellectual study.  They have selected specific victims for examination, but instead of inciting activism, the non-sensationalism of the exhibition is at times apathetic, and thus calls us out for our own apathy toward the details of the content. The power of this show relies on having a calm and ordered appearance, as well as projecting a tone of rationalism.

Exhibition view, Metal Fence, Cady Noland, 1990, 89 Huichols, Santiago Sierra, 2006, Courtesy of Santiago Sierra and KOW BERLIN, Sammlung Gaby and Wilhelm Shuermann, Photo by Alexander Koch

While a sort of historicizing happens with the pieces that involve particular groups of people, the object-based pieces in the show exist with a sort of timelessness. These pieces treat the viewer as both victim and perpetrator. We cause our own unease by walking through an imposing gate, and yet we subject ourselves to the onslaught of bright buzzing lights with the visceral awareness that even though we’re in control, we’re contributing to our own discomfort.

We know the wince and moment of anticipation all too well, but we continue to rubberneck at the sight of a car crash. For all the controversy that Noland and Sierra are known for, the show’s sense of violence or exploitation is severely reserved when pitted against any real story of human suffering. Noland and Sierra’s approaches to victimization in our society complicate our individual roles and responsibilities in playing on either side. While no one wants to be a victim, we seem to find ourselves in a position where victimization is natural or necessary, so we prefer the alternative, perhaps despite the moral implications of it, in order to survive.

Cady Noland / Santiago Sierra is on view at KOW Berlin through July 29, 2011.

Installation view, 'Sterling Ruby. I AM NOT FREE BECAUSE I CAN BE EXPLODED ANYTIME', Sprueth Magers Berlin, 2011, © Sterling Ruby Courtesy Sprueth Magers Berlin London

The year is 1999. Television has adapted to the more violent nature of man.

Sterling Ruby‘s solo show at Sprueth Magers drops you into a space reminiscent of the real world, but reflected through an alternate lens. The main room feels overwhelming in scale, full of over-sized and crudely modeled ceramic sculptures, towering red dripping sculptures that look like some sort of giant animal’s tendons freshly ripped from its body,  and spray-painted canvases hanging on the walls. As well, there are hanging fabric pieces in the shape of drops that both mock and confirm violence with their suggestion as blood drips in such a comically literal fashion.

Sterling Ruby SP151, 2010 Spray paint on canvas 125 x 185 x 2 inches 317.5 x 469.9 x 5.1 cm, © Sterling Ruby Courtesy Sprueth Magers Berlin London

The most popular form of television remains the game show.

The video game Wolfenstein 3-D (1992) introduced gamers to a three-dimensional environment where the camera is your eyes, a now popular point of view with the proliferation of first-person shooter games. Ruby’s spray painted blocks and wall hangings seem to reference the aesthetic of these 90’s video game graphics that place the viewer in this familiar world where you’re still a normal human, but, due to technological limitations, non-essential information, such as concrete walls, aren’t highly rendered. This room is quiet, and the suspended animation of the fabric sculptures puts the situation on pause. It’s calm, but horrific, as if your character has just faced an incredibly dangerous situation and through violent acts, defeated the level. Instead of moving to the next environment however, you’re suspended in this room to examine all of the carnage that has been created. While Wolfenstein and its ilk were often criticized for their violence, there was at least a noble purpose for the bloodshed. The player, the narrative’s clear protagonist, was forced to deal with the situation placed upon him. That sense of urgency is not apparent here, as if the violence has no purpose.

One show in particular has dominated the ratings. That show is Smash T.V. The most violent game show of all time.

Two lucky contestants compete for cash and prizes. Each contestant is armed with an assortment of powerful weapons and sent into a closed arena.

In a first-person game, instead of pressing buttons to make an avatar respond from a distance, the line between reality and the game’s universe is blurred as the player is sharing a pair of eyes with the avatar. When a trigger is pulled, the bullet blasts out from in front of you, and in some cases, due to technological advancements made to heighten the game experience, you can feel a rumble or a recoil as the shot is fired. Your character didn’t shoot as you watched from the god perspective, you made the kill. Ruby argues that we don’t need these alternate worlds to tell us to be violent. By presenting this aesthetic in our real space, the over-the-topness of video games is used to highlight far worse atrocities of man that we regular people may ever have to encounter. In a world where wars are sold with technologies that are meant to separate us from the violence we cause, the hyper-violence suggested in Ruby’s shows drags back the more personal connection linking the offenders and the victims.

Installation view, 'Sterling Ruby. I AM NOT FREE BECAUSE I CAN BE EXPLODED ANYTIME', Sprueth Magers Berlin, 2011, © Sterling Ruby Courtesy Sprueth Magers Berlin London

Nowadays, simulated experiences are, if not completely believable, able to pique and maintain our interest while allowing us to play out fantasy scenarios that we may not want to carry out in reality. The problem comes when these simulations are based on reality and these traumatic and horrific scenarios do exist in our world. In Ruby’s show, it is as if our fused eyes have been pulled from this structure where our sole mission is to defeat the bad guys, into the complex ‘real world’ full of grey areas and complicated matters. This environment within the confines of the gallery, has all of the gore, but none of the background information or context. The entertainment value of gameplay has been stripped away, forcing us to acknowledge the reality we exist in.

The action takes place in front of a studio audience and is broadcast live via satellite around the world.

Video games are violent and make the players of them violent. While the validity of this statement is highly contested, that’s a common argument anytime a kid decides to bring a gun to school and take out his aggressions on the student body. The assertion is that once we find out how fun it is to see something die at our hands in a simulated situation, we are going to get a taste for blood that we need to quench in the real world.

Be prepared.

The future is now.

Sterling Ruby Monument Stalagmite/Survival Horror, 2011 PVC pipe, foam, urethane, wood, spray paint and formica 216 x 63 x 36 inches 548.6 x 160 x 91.4 cm, © Sterling Ruby Courtesy Sprueth Magers Berlin London

Ruby’s show seems to be the antithesis of the much discussed videogamafication of military operations in the media since the first gulf war. He takes the look of the hyper-violence that is all but commonplace in our media and makes one ‘level’ out of the gallery space. When your reality is like the virtual world, and you a video game character,  a sudden shift in what is deemed an acceptable violence level tends to occur.

You are the next lucky contestant.

Italicized and bolded headings are quotes from the opening cutscene of the videogame Smash T.V. (1990)

The Curators Battle, A Choreographed Coincidence. Installation Image. © Laura Gianetti

In both shows, however, I felt that the curators’ hands were so significantly foregrounded that the artists and artworks became ancillary figures. In both Stronger Magic and A Choreographed Coincidence (the two shows presented), the art was overshadowed by how the spaces were organized. The first actually overlapped wall space for works; one drawing was partially lit by a piece involving an intermittent, direct light. The second seems to  purposefully break most gallery conventions (eg. hanging artworks too high or too low, displaying framed drawings leaning against a pedestal, occasionally using non-traditional lighting). The tactics felt arbitrary, as if any piece could stand in the place of any other in a multitude of combinations.

The Curators Battle, Stronger Magic Installation Image. © Laura Gianetti

The non-hierarchical structure of the internet and other systems of organization are cited directly and indirectly in curatorial statements and the work itself, throwing the notion of context into question. The curators treated themselves as assemblage artists, and the art as found objects. Particularly in Stronger Magic, a show that was mainly lit by just one art piece that turned on and off, each individual work became one genericized element in a large installation. The content of the individual works was presented as being barely important, as detailed pieces were only given seconds of decent lighting with which to view them.

The Curators Battle, Stronger Magic. Installation Image. © Laura Gianetti

My concern as an artist, is that the intentions of the artist and the context for understanding their work may have been overlooked in lieu of treating the work as innocuous content for the curators to control and manipulate as justification for their central theses. Something about this felt like misquoting in the way a sound bite from a politician may be extracted without necessary context to influence the speech’s meaning. Viewing images of the event’s photostream, where works were photographed individually, offers each piece it’s own space to establish context within it’s own content. That necessary space was missing live in this ‘Curate-Off’.

As a final note I’ll mention Constant Dullaart, one of the stand-outs in both shows. Check out Poser, a video-based sculpture currently in A Choreographed Coincidence.

Karin Sander, Exhibition view Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2011 © Neuer Berliner Kunstverein/Jens Ziehe

While I could discern where the accountant sat, and maybe the person who opens mail, there was a distinct lack of personality to the trash.  I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but there wasn’t even a single paper coffee cup, let alone food waste, or used Kleenex. One week in, and the most individualizing piece of trash I saw was an empty bag of hard candy. I got the sense that the content was being consciously controlled. So too felt the state of the trashed articles.

Crumpled up paper constitutes the majority of each pile. The act of crumpling, far from an efficient business practice, is the act of the frustrated writer we see in films, passionately struggling at their typewriter. It typically denotes angst towards the text being discarded. It is not simply that the paper has lost its functional use at one’s desk, but that it’s worthless, a failed attempt. Assuming all of the employees don’t loath their jobs, all of this crumpling activity could be the result of trash aestheticization (which I wouldn’t totally discount), or it could simply be the novelty of tossing one’s trash into a seemingly underground pit.

Karin Sander, Exhibition view (Director’s Office, first floor) Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 2011 © Neuer Berliner Kunstverein/Jens Ziehe

A sizable piece of cardboard was ripped up by hand and sent down in smaller chunks, rather than simply putting the piece in a more appropriately sized receptacle. Some paper with non-sensitive information was torn into one inch squares that must have floated down like confetti. While the shift in roles of administrators and artists, and the ecological aspects around Sander’s work could certainly be discussed, what piqued my interest was the effort I felt on the part of the waste-makers to affect their piles, if not with an interest in aesthetics, with a conscious labouring over the materials.

Administrative duties in any field, I can attest, have a tendency to be fraught with tedious tasks and bureaucratic detail and sometimes it’s necessary to find ways to make those tasks more bearable. Being aware that their garbage is on display may elevate anxiety over what a worker throws out, but if nothing more, the activity provides a new way to break up the day by making a game out of waste disposal. While the individual piles may not provide insight into the anthropology of the administrative gallery worker, Sander’s intervention does highlight the ease at which a psychological shift can occur in a white collar worker with minimal spatial changes.

Installation Shot, Agathe Snow, All Access World, 2011, Courtesy of Deutsche Guggenheim, Photo: Mathias Schormann

With its chaotic visual imagery, Agathe Snow’s All Access World feels like Berlin. There are a ton of brightly colored images posted on the walls covering the entire room. In the middle, is an array of what could be small parade floats, approximations of internationally recognized monuments, sometimes crudely made out of a mish-mash of materials. The floor is covered partially with a bright pink pseudo-map of the world. The images on the walls of Snow’s installation are mainly collages of individual monuments. Dozens of what look to be tourist snapped images of a site are piled on, along with pieces of rope or small plastic toys. I got the sense that a Google image search of the cities depicted would render similar findings. The multitude of visual stimuli alone forces a slow, archaeological handling of the space.

By recreating human scale models of famous architecture, structures and historical marvels, Snow presents her work as a showroom for products. The structures themselves are reminiscent of example Big Ben, or the Hollywood sign, but their attainable size suggests that you too could have some for your very own. The catalog even offers a how-to guide for constructing one for yourself. The Stonehenge on wheels is particularly humorous, as it negates the mystery of how those big rocks got in a circle in the first place. This focus on recreating genericizes the objects and strips them of their history; monuments without the baggage. But what is the point of having a grand symbolic structure if it has nothing to say?

Installation Shot, Agathe Snow, All Access World, 2011, Courtesy of Deutsche Guggenheim, Photo: Mathias Schormann

The fact of the matter is that we see this all the time. From world’s fairs to Las Vegas, landmarks and cultures have been rebuilt and represented to varying degrees of accuracy. Entire theme parks have been developed on the premise of bringing the world to you, be it Epcot Center, or on a larger scale, China’s Window of the World. A long car ride down to Florida in order to experience Norway and Italy and Germany may seem like a much better option than an entire European vacation, and there’s no pressure to learn the language. The recreations at world expositions served the purpose of enticing further exploration of these areas by a greater audience. Explorers bringing home the exoticism of Ancient Rome and the Orient led to the broadening of horizons and opened cultural passages to worldwide access. Today, however, I wonder about the amount of tourist dollars generated in Egypt by the Luxor Hotel and Casino.

Conversely, one could argue that it is unnecessary to go to the actual sites, as a theme park facsimile or the Internet can provide us with the same vantage points and access to information. I’ve never seen an image of the Lincoln Memorial more meaningful than any other, and seeing it in D.C. at this point doesn’t really excite me. I could only speculate that perhaps because of the breadth of images I’ve been exposed to on the one subject, the monument reads as a banal image to which I am bored and well-accustomed. One could make a case for aura and the ability of the physical world to give us a visceral experience, but I contend that the access to these places is so great that they have infiltrated our lives without us even actively seeking them out, and in the process they have lost their mystique.

On occasion, I have felt like an ignorant tourist blindly consuming a city, taking in the sights but without fully understanding them, as if I were experiencing the fake version at a theme park. When traveling between monuments as if checking off some sort of scavenger hunt, their value with regard to the place’s history is lost. Then, photos aren’t reminiscent of the significant event memorialized, but rather serve as status symbols; a sort of ‘I was here’ marker, to boast one’s cultured and roaming spirit. Really the intention of traveling, for me, is more self-concerned. It is not so much a quest to see what makes a place culturally relevant but instead it’s a search for a place where I feel comfortable, a home. If I’m interested in a place for its historical significance I’ll read about it at my house.

Agathe Snow during 28th Long Night of the Museums at Deutsche Guggenheim, 2011, Courtesy of Deutsche Guggenheim, Photo: Nina Straßgütl

Snow’s home is New York City. While she is visible in several of the tourist images in the various cities, her relationship to New York is apparent in the personal images in the collages; holding her pregnant belly, posing as the subject rather than as a marker of time and place in front of the monumental subject. She was there for 9/11, a point which provides perspective on the entire show.  While before the World Trade Center was integral to any spanning cinematic shot of the city, the lack of the towers now symbolizes something completely different and is an anti-monument to that day, at least for the time being.

Monuments are created to commemorate and remind, bonding a particular site and time, however the only real value in Snow’s monuments comes from her position in the art market. By presenting these images and effigies of buildings and monuments, we are shown what great markers they are of a place, but also their inability to necessarily signify the history which they were built to present. Perhaps because of an over-saturation of access to the world we have reached such a tolerance for The Spectacular, these feats of ancient times or impossible and innovative architecture, that we’re dull to it’s message. If a monument ceased to exist today there would be no real cultural loss. What the Twin Towers stood for in the hearts of Americans has not been abandoned. Furthermore, we have the history, innumerable images, blueprints and scale models by which to remember them, all easily accessible and available. The proposition of the work suggests that the function of a traditional monument has been outgrown in lieu of more self-centered values. We are now free to take these objects and imbue them with individual meaning. The lingering dust of our past has finally settled; a complicated message particularly in Germany, a country where entire cities have been destroyed and rebuilt as monuments to their former glory, obscuring the event of destruction and investing in one national history over another.

Obstruction, Exhibition View, 2010. Courtesy of Hamish Morrison Galerie.

Gustav Hellberg’s Obstruction at Hamish Morrison Gallery began in a stark grey room, empty except for a model-train size road barrier bar lit up on a pedestal in the center. The sporadic hum of a quiet motor could be heard from the second room. There, a 3×3 grid pattern of twenty-four real, working barrier bars consumed most of the floor space of the second room, the installation centered with a walkway around its perimeter. The bars raised and lowered at random times, allowing and denying access to individual squares or a series of squares at any one time.

Reminiscent of the various security clearance measures taken at airports and government offices where people are systematically herded through a series of rooms or confined spaces, I questioned the desire to enter the grid and navigate through the barriers. I could find no practical reason to enter the installation, but there was something playfully enticing about the proposition offered by Hellberg.

Because of their function in urban space, the rules of appropriate interaction with the road barriers are implicitly known, and even within the gallery they are treated with the same authority. Move when a bar is lifted, and do not walk under a down bar. Game play is transformed into the realization of how open we are to give over power to another individual or thing, despite knowing here that even the biggest success to be had leads to no actual goal other than taking a long and potentially surprising movement through the gallery. Power is wilfully sacrificed to be afforded the opportunity of engaging the piece.

Obstruction, Exhibition View, 2010. Courtesy of Hamish Morrison Galerie.

After initial entry and entrapment, the fear of waiting leads to acting in haste and moving at the first opportunity, rather than sticking to a pre-defined route. There may be some comfort in letting a system make our decisions for us, even though the installation feels a bit like its moving cattle to slaughter, but participants make a conscious decision to enter the piece and follow the rules.  Here, however, a previous movement can be instantly regretted upon seeing a better option present itself when it is too late. That feeling of failure challenges the notion that the machine is in control. The participant is still in control of their movements, but has allowed their decisions to be reactionary to the randomly triggered motors operating the contraption.

While typically, in life, there is no way of knowing how one decision versus another can have significant affects, Hellberg’s Obstruction provides us with the direct relationship between our decisions and the results of them. Like an angel presenting George Bailey with the repercussions of his would-be suicide in It’s a Wonderful Life, one can watch to see how other decisions would have led to potentially more desirable outcomes, but while Bailey was offered a chance to change his decision, ours is played out in real time, without the benefit of hindsight.

The privilege of accessing restricted space, in this case, means giving up full control of our mobility, and leads to the fetishization of other space and guilt over the choices we cannot take back.

Artur Żmijewski, Repetition, 2005, video, 75 min., video still, collection Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (photo: Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw)

This ideology has informed his practice which, from the 1990s, has been characterized by a process of staging experiments as a means of inquiry into social mechanisms of power and control. Repetition (2005), produced for Poland’s Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 is an often-cited example of a work exemplifying the form and themes of his practice. Żmijewski re-enacts the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971 to explore the psychological effects of imprisonment. Though this experiment was cut short and regulations prevented its recurrence in the scientific field, Zimbardo’s claim of man’s desire to dominate has been frequently referenced in academic and cultural realms. Through the re-enactment, Żmijewski asserts art’s ability to remove the experiment from its scientific context and constraints to explore universal human issues stemming from reality.

Democracies ( 2009 ongoing); multi channel video; courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw

Democracies (2007 – ongoing) represents a shift from Żmijewski’s focus in constructing situations, while maintaining its stance on interrogating social norms. The work comprises his documentation over three years of public and collective expressions of protest, celebration and grief, from a demonstration by supporters of Polish anti-abortion laws to the live broadcast of Germany versus Turkey in the semi-final of the 2008 European Football championships. Recently presented at Tramway, Glasgow from 29 October to 12 December 2010, with sixteen screens on all four sides of the room, the viewer, when positioned in the middle was subjected to a cacophony of noises which drowned out the subtleties of the individual films, an experience which parallels the heady effects of collective demonstrations and ceremonies and their impact on individual reflection and thinking. Through his work, Żmijewski puts forth the question of whether mass expressions are indicative of democracy and at a more fundamental level, the validity of democracy as practised and fought for today.

Democracies ( 2009 ongoing); multi channel video; courtesy the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw

Żmijewski will be curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art in 2012. He has initiated a call-for-proposals, requesting that artists provide their political inclination together with their submission before January 15, 2011. Though the norms within art dictate that an artist’s political position remains at a distance from the content of their work, Żmijewski asserts that politics structure our collective needs and hence, all works are political. In deliberately going against a artistic methodology of ascribing a political position to an artwork through this role as curator, there is much to anticipate in how his curatorial decisions contribute to a radically different methodology of exhibition-making.

Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1966, Żmijewski studied sculpture at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts under Grzegorz Kowalski who encouraged students to alter the works of their classmates, as a way to open dialogue on the production of meaning. He is a recipient of the Ordway Prize and has had solo exhibitions in MOMA, New York; Kunsthalle Basel; and BAK, Utrecht. Żmijewski is also arts editor of Krytyka Polityczna (“Political Critique” in Polish) a journal aimed at creating  an intellectual base for alternative movements and to introduce new critical discourses in Polish public debate.