Exhibitions – Büro Friedrich

James Beckett

Living Registration

Tuesday November 21 th – Tuesday, December 19 th 2006

Opening reception: Saturday, November 18 th , 18 – 21h

BüroFriedrich, Berlin, is pleased to present the show Living Registration with installations, reliefs, paper and sound works of South-African artist James Beckett. Beckett scrutinizes the historical origins of technical standards and focuses on the ‘naivety of the historical moment’ – a moment in history, where the private story of the individual and the historicity of our systems of representation collide. The parasitic use of information and its transposition into alien – visual or acoustic – systems are an attempt to test the potential of various languages to hold information. In this sense Beckett’s work can be seen as a modern interpretation of Alfred Jarry’s Pataphysics, a 19th century parody of the theory and methods of modern science that often developed a scientifically precise but nonsensical language. To measure the surface of God – for example – was one of the pataphysical projects. In a museum-like display Beckett presents a grotesque history of standardization.In a site-specific installation, designed especially for BüroFriedrich, Beckett presents his own technical language of purposeful but function-less registration: a hybrid of Braille and Morse codes for the interpretation of the train traffic, which passes above the gallery’s arches.The opening will also be the official launch of Beckett’s personal tartan, produced and registered in Scotland. The Scottish fabric has developed through centuries, representing districts, families and clans, in this way functioning as a key or index of sorts. For this exercise, the artist uses a table of digestive results lifted from the work of William Beaumont (1785-1853) “Father of Gastric Physiology”, who was offered access to the workings of the stomach when a patient of his was accidentally shot in the stomach. The artist takes the findings of the physician and transposes them into image, hence translating stomach behavior into tapestry or pattern.In an additional series of drawings, Beckett uses the graphic language of Monkhouse and Wilkinson to present a perspective on traffic flows, information gathered over several years of automatic car counts on various national roads. The development of the profile demands the reduction of source material to absolutes by means of constant comparison in relation to averages: “In any communication one is challenged to find the most efficient means of representation, a means of description, which inevitably becomes a filter in itself. Information is scaled and blown out of proportion, lost through lack of resolution.”The exhibition will close with a concert to be held in the MünzClub on December 19th, a feature of the N-Ensemble of Holland , a production of the N-Collective. This piece is a transformation of early scientific rabbit experiments into sound.Beckett has exhibited in various African, Asian and European countries. This will be his third European solo-show. Further details available at www.jamesbeckett.tk This exhibition is made possible by:
The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture

James Beckett exhibition view Tartan corner

Chen Xiaoyun, Andreas Koch, Heidi Specker

In distinctive black and white tones, Heidi Specker, Andreas Koch und Chen Xiaoyun present their works in early summer at BüroFriedrich-berlin. A preoccupation with the embodiment of the complex correlation between nature and its effect on human perception and behavior accumulate in a central subject for the works of the three artists from Berlin and Hangzhou. One analyzes the beauty of shadows in nature through the examination of traditional Japanese aesthetics, another attempts to expose the human figure and its effect on nature. The third displays the human being in its modification through the progress of industrialization and urbanization.

Chen Xiaoyun (*1971 in Hubei, CN, lives and works in Hangzhou) shows with the two videos DRAG, 2006 and LASH, 2005 the preoccupation of the human individual with its environment, which – as merely a cog in the machinery of increasing industrialization – is dominated by physical exertion. As an expression of the pointlessness of redundant work, DRAG shows a man, who pulls with all his might a rope, whose end is fixed to a wall. ‘You have no reason to know nothing, about all darkness.’ (Chen Xiaoyun) And the darkness appears in the shadow world behind the wall.
LASH displays the image of black night. Hints of the plot are only visible through short flashes of light, whose recurring quick bursts are accompanied by the crack of a whip; highlighting scenes of a man and a horse, who both work until burnt-out. ‘A flash is a crack of the whip, and time is an individual religion.’ (Chen Xiaoyun) From a new Asian perspective, this work asks new questions of the phenomenon of work in our times.

Andreas Koch (*1970 in Stuttgart, GER, Lives and works in Berlin) transforms the entrance of BF-b with a romantic, monumental reproduction of a seascape. With a black and white wallpaper installed across a corner, the landscape surrounds the viewer like a diorama from the 19th century. Single details and small scenes, hung in hyper-resolution colour quality on top of the wallpaper, imply a narrative element and refer to little anecdotes of daily life.
Andreas Koch’s second work contradicts the romantic traits of the first. Visually reminiscent of a minimal artwork, a glass tunnel, installed with an opening to the Spree River, in which a lightbox has been enclosed, attracts the large population of mosquitos and spiders inhabiting the river. will be enticed into the sculpture during the night and slowly transform it.

Heidi Specker (*1962 in Damme, GER, lives and works in Berlin) presents her new series Day for Night, the result of her trip to Japan in March 2006. The intense examination of the effect of light and shadow mark the three dark exposures of the Imperial Villa and gardens of Shugakuin as well as the two bright architectural photographs of the terrace of her hotel in Tokyo.
As an origin of Heidi Speckers studies, In Praise of Shadows written in 1933 by the Japanese author Junichiro Tanizaki provides a basis. In his reflections on the origin of Japanese aesthetics, Tanizaki contrasts the Japanese beau ideal of muted colors and surfaces with the bright illumination of the Western World. By contrasting the whitewashed walls of her Tokyo hotel with the intensely darkened exposure from the Japanese garden – analog to the Day-for-Night method known from film – , Heidi Specker pays homage to this sensuous essay about the beauty of shadows.

Kleine Fliegenfalle by Andreas Koch Detail

Funky Lessons

14 September – 13 November 2004

John Baldessari, Monica Bonvicini, Andrea Fraser, Martin Gostner, Eva Grubinger, Erik van Lieshout, Marko Lulic, Aleksandra Mir, Adrian Piper, Tino Sehgal, Annika Ström, Barbara Visser, Franz West.

Curated by Jörg Heiser.

The exhibition is funded by the Berlin Capital Culture Fund, the Mondriaan Foundation, and the art section of Austria’s Bundeskanzleramt.

A common resentment against conceptual art is that it was too didactic. The exhibition brings together work by artists that tackle the problem head-on: they undermine the authority of educational forms yet do not simply renounce knowledge and critique. Humour and role play are the disarming weapons used in performance, video, installation, painting and sculpture. New ways open up beyond the cul-de-sac of a false choice between harmless hermeticism and patronizing gestures.

The title of the exhibition is inspired by Adrian Piper’s pivotal piece “Funk Lessons” (1982-1984), a video based on a performance by the artist teaching – a mostly white – audience of students basic and advanced dance routines of funk and soul music. Another classic example is John Baldessari’s “Baldessari Sings LeWitt” of 1972: the artist sings, like a lay preacher, the famous, stern Sentences on Conceptual Art by Sol LeWitt, to the melody of famous songs, among them the US anthem. Or Franz West’s cross between a pedestal and a lectern “Laocoon’s sprimgy head (Lessingmstudy)” of 2002, with a paperback copy of Lessing’s ‘Laokoon, or on the divisions between painting and poetry’ casually placed inside of it. In the book, Lessing plays off sculpture, which according to him was static, against poetry, which was in motion. West counters the assumption with an amorphous, reddish lump mounted with a rusty steel spring onto the top of the lectern.

Works by 13 artists from 6 countries will be on display throughout the whole space of BüroFriedrich from September through November 2004. BüroFriedrich is a non-profit international venue for contemporary art that has already put on several exhibitions dealing with the history and present of conceptualism. Complementing a group of classical pieces (Piper, Baldessari), there are some recent works (Fraser, Grubinger, van Lieshout, West) and some commissioned exclusively for the exhibition (Bonvicini, Gostner, Lulic, Mir, Sehgal, Ström, Visser).

A series of lectures at Münzclub (Münzstr. 23, Berlin Mitte), taking place on Mondays from 13 September, will address the question of didactics in direct exchange with the audience: some of them will take the form of ‘interview’ (Adrian Piper on 8 November, Aleksandra Mir on 13 September), while others will cross over into performance (Barbara Visser, on the opening night, 11 September). A catalogue which will encompass some of the material from these lectures will be published after the exhibition.

Funky Lessons at Münzsalon
Münzstraße 23, 10178 Berlin
admission €4, Members free

Every Monday 8p.m. Jörg Heiser talks to:

13 September Aleksandra Mir (English)
20 September Martin Gostner and Marko Lulic (German)
27 September Kerstin Grether and Klaus Walter “The Funky Lessons of Pop Music” (German)
04 October Thomas Bayrle “The Funky Lessons of Teaching” (German)
11 October Tino Sehgal (German)
18 October ‘No Talk’ – Funky Lessons Surprise Film
25 October Monica Bonvicini (German)
01 November Eva Grubinger and Annika Ström (English)
08 November Adrian Piper (English)

John Baldessari 'Baldessari sings LeWitt', 1971 — John Baldessari ‘Baldessari sings LeWitt’, 1971, 15 min b&w

John Baldessari 'Baldessari sings LeWitt', — John Baldessari ‘Baldessari sings LeWitt’, 1971, 15 min b&w

Exhibitions

Standort Berlin, Places to Stay #1

1 November 1997 – 15 Januari 1998

1 November, 00.00, ‘Floppy on Halloween,’ the opening of BüroFriedrich by Dick Donkey’s Dawn, a live performance by Sean Dower (UK), Oliver Hangl (A), Georgina Starr (UK).

17.00: opening exhibition ‘Standort Berlin, Places to Stay’ – opening guest: Cookies, artists: (through 16 December) Rineke Dijkstra (NL); (through 18 January) Daniele Buetti (CH), Alicia Framis (E), Aernout Mik (NL), Carsten Höller (D), Georgina Starr (GB); special guests Zapp Magazine (NL) and Assaf Etiel (IS).

The midnight music performance of ’Floppy on Halloween‘ showed how the artists practice the contemporary position of crossover between art and popmusic. The opening event took place during the art fair ‘Art Forum Berlin.’

The accent on popular aspects of culture was continued in this and other episodes of ‘Standort Berlin, places to stay.’ Georgina Starr’s installation was a vocal interpretation of Charles Manson’s poem ‘Eyes of a Dreamer.’ Rineke Dijkstra’s video projections, ‘The Buzz Club’ and ‘Mystery World’ show confronting portraits of teenagers dancing in clubs in Holland and England. Daniele Buetti’s work shows how identity and public appearance are used in our lifestyle-oriented culture by the public relation strategies of the industry; in his work, the names of multi-nationals appear as tattoos on parts of the human body printed on wall-paper that decorated the walls of one of Büro-Friedrich’s rooms. Conventions of beauty and underlying identity were the issues, whereas the ‘Pealove Room’ by Carsten Höller (a room to have sex in, under influence of drugs, without touching the floor) proposed a playground furnished for a maximum of sensorial experience.

The installation of Aernout Mik transformed the office into an ambiguous space of observation: the viewer was confronted with a situation in which the video projection ‘Kitchen’ – a couple of old men involved in a kind of boxing match – merged with the daily activities in the office. At the exhibition opening, this aspect was intensified by a live act of two people, who separated themselves in a private corner in the office. ‘Zapp Productions’, an innovative production platform based in Amsterdam, were also invited to present their video magazine ‘Zapp’. They showed unpublished video recordings of exhibitions of artist like Mariko Mori, Peter Land, Kirsten Mosher as well as a tape of Arnoud Holleman recorded in an urban situation, namely, the closed world of a group of homeless people.

Outside BüroFriedrich, a billboard of Alicia Framis was created as a part of the work ´blood friendship´. This billboard image showed in public the intimate act of making friendship between two people. In a back part of the building Assaf Etiel installed ´Paparazzi´s´, an extension of ´Sniper´, an art/club-oriented meeting point in Berlin-Mitte.