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The Possibility Of An Island

Gruppenausstellung

THE POSSIBILITY OF AN ISLAND
by IMPORT Projects

DATE
From: 15 May 19:00
To: 20 Jul 22:00

LOCATION
Import Projects
Keithstrasse 10
10787 Berlin
Germany

Curated by Elena Gilbert and Nadim Samman

Julieta Aranda
Mohamed Azzam Axza
Goldin+Senneby
Daniel Keller
Antii Laitinen
Mariyam Omar
Bik Van der Pol
Alexander Ponomarev
Andrew Ranville
Antoine Renard
Nicholas Roberts

Just as John Donne reported his discovery – that ´no man is an island, entire of itself`, but ´a piece of the continent, a part of the main` – so Thoreau announced that ´the smallest stream is a Mediterranean sea`. In the particular, macro potential is revealed. Since Plato, through Defoe and Swift, via Gauguin, and in the work of numerous contemporary artists the island figure has been employed to negotiate relationships between the real and the imaginary, utopia and dystopia, selfhood and otherness, centre and periphery. This exhibition charts the topography of this intellectual archipelago – interrogating the possibility of isolation in the 21st Century.

Artist Biographies:

Julieta Aranda (b.1975) was born in Mexico City and currently lives between New York and Berlin. Her practice deals with a range of themes including the idea of a “poetics of circulation”, the politicized subject or the possibility of a politicized subjectivity, perception of time, and one´s power over the imaginary. Projects take the form of printed media, installation, video, and community organizing. As co-director of e-Flux with Anton Vidokle, she developed the projects Pawnshop (currently in Beijing), and e-flux video rental, which started in the e-Flux storefront in New York in 2004 and hast raveled to more than fifteen venues worldwide. Her work has been exhibited internat ionally in venues such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2009), Kunstverein Arnsberg (2010), MOCA Miami (2009), Witte de With (2010), Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2007), 2nd Moscow Biennial (2007), MUSAC Spain (2006), and the VII Havana Biennial (2000).

Mohamed Azzam Axza, is a Maldivian artist who work s with sound and multimedia. He is member of Dhivehi Studio in Malé.

Goldin+Senneby (s ince 2004) is a framework for col laboration set up by artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby; exploring juridical, financial and spatial constructs through notions of the performative and the virtual. Their collaboration started with The Port (2004 - 06); acting in an emerging public sphere constructed through digital code. In their more recent body of work, known as Headless (2007-), they approach the sphere of offshore finance and its production of virtual space through legal code. Looking at strategies of withdrawal and secrecy, they trace an offshore company on the Bahamas called Headless Ltd. A ghostwritten detective novel continuously narrates their investigations. Solo exhibitions include: I dis pense, divide, as sign, keep, hold NAK, Aachen (2012); Standard Length of a Miracle, CAC, Vilnius (2011); The Decapitation of Money, Kadist, Paris (2010); Headless. From the public record, Index, Stockholm (2009); Goldin+Senneby: Headless, The Power Plant, Toronto (2008). Group exhibitions include: The Deep of the Modern, Manifes ta 9, Genk (2012); The End of Money, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011); The Moderna Exhibition, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010); Uneven Geographies, Nottingham Contemporary (2010); In living contact, 28th Bienal de Sao Paulo (2008). Residenci es include: Headlands, San Francisco (2012); SALT, Istanbul (2012).

Daniel Keller (b.1986). Studied at The Art Institute of Chicago (US), Städelschule Frankfurt (DE) and at The University of Arts, Berlin (DE). His wide-ranging output as part of AIDS-3D addresses a myriad of issues at the intersection of culture, technology, economics and politics . He has exhibited at The New Museum, New York, (2009), Based In Berlin (2011), DLD Conference, Munich, (2012), 3rd Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, (2012), Made in Germany Two, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, (2012) Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, (2012) and Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (2013).

Antti Laitinen´s (b.1975) work reappraises the heroic ethos and underlying notions of the artist in performance art, frequently deploying a humour that arises from a meeting between impossible and incommensurate elements. Laitinen graduated with an MA from the Helsinki Art Academy in 2004. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Arts, Gateshead, UK; Exprmntl galerie, Toulouse, France; and Scope New York. Groupexhibitions include La position de la Terre, The Rhinelander Contemporary Art Center, France; Beauhemia, NETTIE HORN, London, UK; The Faraway Nearby, White Box, New York, USA; Male Stuff, Peri, Turku, Finland and Gallery Signe Vad, Copenhagen, Denmark; 4th Triennal of Finnish Art, Kunsthalle, Helsinki, Finland; Nordisk Panorama (18th Nordic Short & Documentary Film Festival), Oulu, Finland; What is Live Ar t in Finnish? Muu galleria, Helsinki, Finland and upcoming exhibitions at Gallery Emil Filla, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic and Kerava Art Museum, Finland.


copyright Mariyam Omar

Mariyam Omar was born in the Maldives in 1980. Her practice focuses on exploring the idea of acquiring a sense of emotional perseverance or control in a repressive regime. Her previous body of work mainly consists of paintings and installations. Untitled Works, her first solo exhibition was held at the National Art Gallery in Maldives in 2011. She has exhibited in group exhibitions in different countries including the Bangladesh Biennale in 2008, Puducherry Blue in India, and the Art of Change Commonwealth Women´s Exhibition organized by Kambani Arts exhibited at the Royal Commonwealth Society´s Commonwealth Club Gallery in London in 2011. Her most recent group exhibition was the XOPI Exhibition of Public Inquiry of public inquiry & expression concerning the events leading up to, during & preceding 6/7 February 2012, it was held at Male´ City Hall in August 2012 after the Coup.

Bik Van der Pol are based in Rotterdam and have worked collectivel since 1995. Their work explores art´s potential produce and transmit knowledge, through cooperative research methods and the creation of platforms for various kinds of communication. Recent solo shows and projects include Are you really sure a floor can´t also be a ceiling? ENEL Award 2010, MACRO museum, Rome (2010); It isn´t what it used to be and will never be again, CCA Glasgow (2009); I´ve got something in my eye, Marie Louise Hessel Museum/CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY(2008); Nomads in Residence/No.19, a mobile work space for artists, Utrecht (2003, with Korteknie Stuhlmacher architects). Recent group shows include: The Future of Pumphouse, Pumphouse gallery, London (2011); We are Grammar, Pratt Institute, New York (2011); Learning from Vancouver, Western Front, Vancouver (2010); Portscapes, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2010); Street of Sculptures, Bijlmer, Amsterdam (2011/2012); A Retrospective Future, CAC VOX, Mont real (2011); Living As Form, Creative Time, New York (2011). They curated Too late, too little, (and how) to fail gracefully, Kunstfort Asperen, ww.kunstfortasperen.nl (2011).


Alexander Ponomarev, Maya: A Lost Island, Barents Sea, 2000. Dual channel video

Alexander Ponomarev (b.1957) graduated from the USSR Naut ical Engineering College in 1979, following a period at the Orel Art School. He is an Officier d´Arts et de Lettres (France) and a member of the Russian Academy of Arts. In 2007 he represented Russia at the 52nd Venice Biennale, and in 2009 docked his handmade submarine, SubTiziano, on the Grand Canal as an Official Collateral Project of the 53rd Biennale. In 2012 he represented the Ukraine at the 13th Venice Biennale of Architecture. His works are in major public collections worldwide including the Centre Georges Pompidou, FNAC (Fonds Nat ional d’ Ar t Contemporain), France, State Russian Museum, (St Petersburg), the Collection of the Great Duchess of Luxembourg, National Museum of Singapore, and the University Jaumel, Castellon de la Plasa (Spain).


copyright Andrew Ranville

Andrew Ranville, born 1981 in Michigan, USA, lives and works in London, United Kingdom since 2006, receiving his MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2008. Ranville´s work describes the relation of the body to space inhabited, interacted with, and navigated. His installations, sculptures, architectural interventions, photographs and films explore ideas related to site - specificity as well as the viewer´s interaction with the work. The balance between the formal and functional aspects of the work often elicits those interactions, and are realized using ecologically sensitive methods which communicate ideas of sustainability and resilience.

Antoine Renard´s conceptual projects involve a set of gestures, processes and appropriations. His work aims to deconstruct the mechanisms of consumption, creatively enacting possible methods of abstractions within a bio-economic frame. From the cultivation of a large indoor field of toxic ´visionary` plants (Spiritual Substances _ 2012) to a set of free fall experiment on the flying possibilities of a piece of raw meat (MEAT DROP_ 2010/2012), Renard´s ecology of production embraces the paradoxes of a contemporary society torn between it´s wish for freedom and spirituality and it´s systematic establishment of addictive infrastructures and technologies. He is currently short listed for the 58th Salon de Montrouge (Paris, FR), and is invited to be part of Parc St- Leger Art Center residency program »LaGrandeOurse« (Nevers, FR). Recent exhibitions and contribution include More or Less, WcWgallery (Hamburg, DE), The Firm at X Marks the Bökship London (with BrokenDimanchePress), Osmosis , Altes Finanzamt (Berlin, DE) and Campus, a project initiated by the curatorial office Lattitudes (Barcelona, ES).

Nicholas Roberts is a British artist currently based in Berlin. His practice takes as its starting point the operational practices of design, architecture and advertising. Drawing on standard modes of production used in these fields, as well as modes of fabrication used in the working environment, Roberts deals with the social concerns of artistic production within the gallery environment - the discrepancy between tradesperson and artist, and the role of the artist as a bridge between the gallery environment and the physical space of everyday life. Colour and form, set within a spatial context and with the scale and immediacy of advertising, are used to redirect, control and confuse the orientation of the viewer, and draw at tention to the discrepancy between the metaphoric content of a work and its physicality as an object - the scars of the labour of its fabrication. Roberts´ work is often site specific and project based, to be destroyed upon completion of the exhibition.



Vernissage: May 15, 7-10pm. Finissage: July 20, 7-10pm.
Open Thursday-Saturday 12-6pm & by appointment

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