Branding as Rebellion in THE CARDS YOU WERE DEALT @ Dittrich & Schlechtriem in Berlin

 
 

Last week, Monty Richthofen performed THE CARDS YOU WERE DEALT, a corporeal intervention in which he explored the concepts of choice, transgenerational dialogue, and transformation through tattooing. Seven participants were randomly selected. In the project, three texts were presented to the chosen participant. These texts are all accounts of 21st century phenomena. If a participant agreed to get one of the texts tattooed, they then got to choose three other texts for the following participant. The placement and composition of the text were decided collaboratively with the artist. The tattoos form a coherent text piece, a physical exquisite corpse, that is painted on a light box, echoing our individual but interconnected experience. THE CARDS YOU WERE DEALT was first performed in September 2023 and most recently included in the 2023 Gallery Weekend Berlin.

THE CARDS YOU WERE DEALT was performed at Dittrich & Schlechtriem, Linienstraße 23, 10178 Berlin.

Garish Queerness as a Mode of Restoration in Pierre le Riche's New Show @ Ronewa Art Projects in Berlin

In Pierre le Riche’s current exhibition, In Four Places at Once, the artist creates vivid figurative wall tapestries that center his queer identity while reflecting on the complexities of belonging in a contemporary world. Identity is woven into and essential to le Riche’s practice; much of his work has been aimed at challenging norms and associations around gender and sexuality and confronting themes of colonialism and white privilege. The group of artworks on show emerged from a period of internal struggle as le Riche acclimatized to a new environment following his move from Cape Town to Aachen, Germany. In this light, le Riche’s choice of tufted yarn as a material, reminiscent of cozy household textiles, feels fitting to conjure a homesick state of yearning and introspection. Le Riche’s use of craft – elsewhere in his practice he also employs embroidery, sewing, and crochet – tosses out outdated notions of gendered art forms. Through his homoerotic content, le Riche pushes back against the conservativeness of a middle-class, suburban upbringing in Post-Apartheid South Africa. His cartoonish nude figures, some sporting exaggerated genitalia, can be read as playfully provocative and unapologetically gay, testing the boundaries of puritanical sensibilities. Simultaneously, his characters are contorted and dislocated in space, imbued with vulnerability, uncertainty, and longing.

In Four Places at Once is on view through March 28th at Ronewa Art Projects, Potsdamer Str. 91, 10785 Berlin.

[REVIEW] Queer Routes to Restoration in The Embodied Press @ Kala Art Gallery in Berkeley

text by Chimera Mohammadi

“I lingered in front of the bar and felt eyes search my face.” As the words flit across an uncanny array of printed eyes in Malic Amalya’s short film “Flyhole,” Amalya confines in language the current that unites the work in The Embodied Press: Queer Abstraction and the Artist’s book, a touring exhibition curated by Anthea Black which has just finished its Berkeley stop. The show consists of a glorious collection of Queer aesthetics that question whether they want to be seen and ultimately insist upon it, considering the tenuous relationship between Queerness and observation without compromising the Queer right to be seen. The space where Queerness and spectacle overlap has often held violence: The Embodied Press is a reclamation of that space, thrusting the historic traumas of the Queer community into the spotlight while soothing the resulting discomfort with self-owned Queer spectacle. Lyman Piersma’s delicate, heartrending recordings of life during the AIDS epidemic and Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo’s brutally raw love notes and protest poems imbue the space with a revolution-inspiring pathos. Kate Laster’s kaleidoscopic collages suspend themselves in space like bursts of visual jazz, and radiant books of wordless color gradients by Nicholas Shick embody the transcendent euphoria of gender transition. Married couple Miller and Shellabarger’s hazy fields of pastel erotica pepper the space like escape hatches, doors into a welcoming party, while their massive paper dolls cordon off corners for “Flyhole” and Nadine Baritueau’s “Au Revoir” to quietly question the paranoia of being seen and the appeal of disappearance. 

The Embodied Press is on view through February 9th, 2024, at Kala Art Gallery at 2990 San Pablo Ave, Berkeley, CA 94702.

Wolfgang Voigt Births Rich Yet Minimalist Psychedelia with the Loop Principle @ Galerie Nagel Draxler in Berlin

In both his musical and pictorial work, Wolfgang Voigt predominantly adheres to strict conceptual principles, which he refines and diversifies consistently. Alongside his mostly sample-based, rather free-abstract to gestural musical and figurative language, it is primarily the “loop principle” that has always fascinated Voigt. The static or varied repetition of minimalistic structures creates certain patterns, grooves, and shapes. This way of thinking is shaped not least by the structure of computer-based music programs, permeating Voigt’s work in various ways.

Whether navigating the tension between 4/4th bass drum-based groove patterns and condensed visual sequences/loops, or reopening the loops and engaging in free-abstract deconstruction (re-enchantment/de-interpretation) – for Wolfgang Voigt, sampling and “the loop” represents a way of perceiving the world. Even when adhering to certain rules and concepts in selecting and processing his source material, he intentionally allows deviations to emerge, often locating what he is “looking for” not in the intended location but in its vicinity. In the virtuoso interplay between “man and machine” he is consistently focused on the simultaneity of strict conceptual minimalism and the hypnotic-psychedelic effect of beginninglessness and endlessness. This encompassed the conceptual-rational observation of surfaces through digital pop art lenses and the creation of intoxicating, shimmering surfaces. And it involves the negation of predictability.

Mit Maschinen Sprechen is on view through April 13th at Galerie Nagel Draxler, Weydingerstraße 2/4, 10178 Berlin.

Read Our Interview of Teresa Baker on the Occasion of Her Solo Exhibition @ NADA Miami →

A woman ( Teresa Baker) in a studio with art in the back and a table at her side.

Raised nomadically along the Northern Plains of the United States, artist Teresa Baker spent her childhood shrouded in tribal storytelling. However, it wasn’t until recently that she realized how thoroughly steeped her visual work had become in all of these inherited allegories. Working with a wide range of materials, both organic and inorganic, she weaves the fiction and nonfiction of her heritage to create works that reflect the complex nature of American tradition. Referencing artists of the abstract expressionist, cubist, and postminimalist movements in harmony with the topographical territories and utilitarian objects employed by the Indigenous nations who inform her practice, Baker imbues her works with an autonomy that allows them to be singular and timeless. In anticipation of her solo exhibition with de boer, Los Angeles at NADA Miami, I spoke with the artist about her unusual path into artmaking, the influence of her wide-reaching travels abroad, and the delicate balance of becoming a mother while the demand for her work has skyrocketed. Read more.