Sunday, October 3, 2010

Invite to Conversations: Opening Monday October 4 in Berlin Mitte



Invite Design by
 SVEN HAUSHERR                                       



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Conversations Press Release


Beez and Honey Presents
Conversations: New York à Berlin
Berlin à New York

Curated by Nicollette Ramirez

Opening Party Monday Oct 4, 6 pm onwards
22 Mulackstrasse, Berlin Mitte

Performance by Michelle Isava
David Button drawing
Bodo Korsig metal sculpture
Uri Dotan video
Maike Paul photography
Sebastian Gross Ossa painting
Christopher Steadman video
Maureen Jeram painting
Hiroshi McDonald Mori mixed media
Juanli Carrion photography

To do an exhibition in Berlin, from a for profit stand point, may seem to some a fool hardy thing. All through my last sojourn in Berlin I heard time and time again, Berlin is a great place to create, not a place to sell art. Well I set out to prove this thesis wrong, as I knew, and heard from dealers, that an international clientele in fact supported many of the galleries in Berlin. And of course, coming from my non profit background, a for profit agenda was not my main motive for doing the show, but it certainly is a motive. And this inspiration to use Berlin as a frontier came from someone born in Israel, who spent years in NYC, and then moved to Berlin and started a very successful business in Mitte. He said Berlin welcomes innovation, welcomes ideas, and rewards it.

I love that Berlin rewards the intrepid collector too. It offers the collector an unadulterated experience of creativity. I love that Berlin is unapologetic, in fact revels in, its lack of material resources, and has fun, and parties. There are opportunities to find spaces, to pay little, and to create a lot. In that sense too, Berlin is like NYC in the 70s for an entrepreneur; opportunities to find spaces, pay little and create a lot. NYC at this time is at saturation point; all the spaces are taken and those that a free cost a lot. Artists are driven more and more to the periphery of the city, like in London, and Paris.

Berlin is unique in that it still offers its artists, and foreign artists, a home. Some of the foreign artists in NYC have come from Berlin and some artists in Berlin have come from NYC. On a very literal level this is what Conversations is about; the physical back and forth of artists between these cities, but also the creative connections and the exchange of ideas and energy between the two cities.

I must have met Bodo Korsig about 6 years ago. He had a studio on Spring Street in Soho and I was impressed by the massiveness of his work. Everything is just like him; big and manly. Even small pieces have that strong masculinity about them, which I love. Maike Paul is a similar case; a Berliner living and working in NYC. Hiroshi Mc Donald Mori made the opposite trek, from NYC to Berlin. David Button, originally from Miami, lived in NYC for 10 years and moved recently to Berlin. Maureen Jeram lived in upstate New York for several years and has lived in Berlin several years. She paints with a sensibility that echoes German tendencies in painting, while maintaining a fresh NYC edge. Christopher Steadman I met in Rome last summer, a friend of a very good friend of mine from NYC. He’s an international artist in the current global art world. Constantly moving between cities, his aesthetic is informed by a worldview that is unifying while at the same time bringing multiple points of views that are specific to him only. Michelle Isava is Trinidadian and her Berlin -> NYC connection comes from being in the right place at the right time, i.e. doing a performance workshop in Berlin after having met me in Trinidad and Tobago, our birthplace, and me living in NYC.  The same applies to Juanli Carrion, Sebastian Gross Ossa and, Uri Dotan whose work has a very German sensibility and who has me as the conduit between NYC and Berlin.

Conversations strives to bring the viewer into a very specific vision of what happens when two cities switch it up a bit; what germinates from the union of two similar yet separate seeds.

Exhibition ends Sunday October 10, 2010

THIS EXHIBITION IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY


NEW ADDRESS
GORMANNSTRASSE 8-9 / ENTRANCE MULACKSTRASSE  I 10119 BERLIN I FON +49 (0)30 28047528 I FAX +49 (0)30 28047529 I HECKING-SHOP.COM
MON-FRI 13-19 I SAT 13-18 I TUE CLOSED

CONTACT:
Nicollette Ramirez
+49 176 36730507
nicollette@beezandhoney.com

Monday, September 20, 2010

Conversations Opens Monday October 4 in Berlin Mitte


Conversations: New York à Berlin
                         Berlin à New York


A group exhibition about the creative connections between Berlin and NYC

Curated by Nicollette Ramirez

Opening Party Monday October 4, 6 pm onwards

22 Mulackstrasse, Berlin Mitte

Performance by Michelle Isava

David Button drawing
Bodo Korsig metal sculpture
Uri Dotan video
Maike Paul photography
Juanli Carrion photography







Artist: Juanli Carrion
Title: Sankeishi-seki V - VI - VII
Media: Triptych C-PRINT on Dibond
Size: 3 - 35 x 25 cm
Year: 2010
Series: Kei-Seki A.P
Price: 2.000€ 

Kei-Seki

The stones that conform Suiseki are objects that the nature transforms in
infinite and different forms. All of them must have some concrete basic
features of matter, form and color, as well as suggest some scene or object
associated with nature. Further more the most important is its spirit, a spirit
that undermines for its suggestion and communication capacity that means
its capacity for touching the mind and soul of the spectator.

Kei-Seki is a term created from the union between the word Kei that means
scene and Seki that means stones. At the same time the word Keiseki also
means proof, evidence or trace. This expression names the project giving
an ironic tinge to everything that represents the Suiseki culture trough a
western altered outlook.

My working practice starts with my interest in certain elements that conform
landscape. When I choose an element I take into consideration not only the
conscience world directly associated with this one, but also the subconscious
once, the social once and the ones belonging to the sensory realm. With this
I try to arise questions not only social or political but the once of the tense
that human mind has to create references and visual patterns related to
the environment, as well as the effects those associations or their breaking
points have in society.

Although my artistic practice is develop in and through different mediums,
its always has a strong photographic background. Therefore this discipline
is in many occasions its final result though some how I also take it as a
starting point, as a way of thinking and a key tool of my creative process.

In this case, some constructions that should be part of a bridge with a high
velocity railway or highway become the elements over which I delve into.

This blocks and columns will never become a bridge because this has been
build 500m south due to a change in the railway, a planning mistake or
maybe due to a problem during its construction. Anyway the actual bridge
and these pieces form now part of the environment that surrounds them.

The project started with a site-specific installation from those found ele-
ments, using specific illumination related to culture of entertainment, like
the ones of night-clubs or traditional Christmas decoration. This put us in
touch with some codes and popular references. Afterwards each piece and
the whole was photographed, generating a series of images. The photographs
are mounted on Dibond and framed in a wooden box without glass. For its
exhibition I recreate inside the space the same atmosphere founded in the
images using light and smoke.

The final result is a body of images presented inside an installation evocat-
ing the complicated relationship between man and its natural environment,
inviting the spectator to expand their perceptions of the nature of the reality
and the reality of nature.


THIS EXHIBITION IS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY
NEW ADDRESS:
GORMANNSTRASSE 8-9 / ENTRANCE MULACKSTRASSE  I 10119 BERLIN I 
FON +49 (0)30 28047528 I FAX +49 (0)30 28047529 I HECKING-SHOP.COM
MON-FRI 13-19 I SAT 13-18 I TUE CLOSED