RESORT
Luzia Cruz, Malin Dorn, Maximilian Glas, Klara Kirsch, Jáno Möckel, Rodrigo Rosa, Anna Stüdeli and Akinori Tao
Structured by the idea of ‘tour’ - a journey for business or pleasure - the tourism industry has grown massively in the last century, sustained by a well-spread logic of commodification of pleasure. As free time slowly turned into a product, products such as resorts started to emerge. Offering anything from unlimited food, drinks and activities ranging from scuba diving to sex or safaris for a fixed price, preferably somewhere sunny, these spaces stand as all-inclusive, autonomous islands, the ultimate product of the leisure industry.
And yet, like with any other industry, this comes at a cost. As an economic activity based on using material resources in order to fulfill immaterial needs, tourism is to a certain degree a phenomenon of evaporation, a big stream vanishing in space as water leaves (or overfills) the ground. Thus a couple of questions may be asked. For instance, to what extent is tourism following the same principles of overproduction of other industries? Are ecosystems absorbed as a sub-product, an exquisite version of experience? Should this hyper-version of experience be seen as a reflection of the promise of a hyper-version of oneself?
Focusing on the threshold of leisure and consumption, the aim of “RESORT” is to capture and mirror the tension between these issues in space. The exhibition thus works as a form of material survey, presenting a multitude of artistic positions navigating the relation between waste and desire.
Curated by Guilherme Vilhena Martins
26.10.2023 – 11.11.2023
Opening hours
Saturday, Sunday and by appointment
2pm – 6pm
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Bubble Bath
22.09. 2023 – 08.10.2023
22.09. 2023 – 08.10.2023
PCassidy van Acker, Nova A. Bill, Daniel Chelmiński, Key Chroma, Yohn Doe, Dangerous Ideas, Valérie des Esseintes, Georges, Arwin Goldbaum, Hermess, Rosa Herz, Iridium_9555, Jongdon, Nicole Kindermann, Lily Larkin, Mikhri Melsovna, Philip Morris, Donald Ronaldo, Alicul Sánchez, Dewy Shalloon, Maria Georg Smithee, Dave J. Sterhling, syp.biz, Herr W., Sally West and C.T. Valve
In a world where identities are often constructed by names, locations, and genders, there are multiple reasons for the use of a pseudonym, an alter ego. Whether it be an identity shift, a shelter, artistic or political statement, pseudonyms allow individuals to navigate societal constraints and create spaces where they can embrace their expression.
First and foremost the group show started as a playful invitation, not giving more instructions than asking people to let themselves show a work they usually wouldn‘t present, something detached from their established practice. At the same time, more subtly, with this concept we are winking at the art world. It seems that the relationship between an artist‘s persona and their work is magnified, sometimes to the point where it feels forced upon the creator.
Throughout the process of realizing the show, reading through the proposals and talking to the artists we witnessed a multiple of different approaches and motivations behind working under a pseudonym, taking the concept and making it their own. Some artists created entire personas through which they viewed the world and hence worked. Some artists allowed this to show a piece that they already produced yet just haven’t found a context that seemed fitting. Some artists used this space to propose a work they said was a little too personal under the usual circumstances. For some artists creating work under a pseudonym was their long awaited personal permission to try out an entirely new medium. Often the motivation was to experiment light heartedly, and often it was to express freely.
Not only did the artwork created under pseudonyms bear unique identities, but the pseudonyms themselves took on lives of their own. Some pseudonyms seamlessly fit into the conceptual framework of the art, while others were shaped by a multitude of influences, becoming distinct entities in their own right.
Under the show “Bubble Bath“ a variety of approaches are assembled deconstructing and constructing the idea of an artist‘s identity.
Curated by Jakob Francisco and Lena Stewens
Photos by Jakob Otter
In a world where identities are often constructed by names, locations, and genders, there are multiple reasons for the use of a pseudonym, an alter ego. Whether it be an identity shift, a shelter, artistic or political statement, pseudonyms allow individuals to navigate societal constraints and create spaces where they can embrace their expression.
First and foremost the group show started as a playful invitation, not giving more instructions than asking people to let themselves show a work they usually wouldn‘t present, something detached from their established practice. At the same time, more subtly, with this concept we are winking at the art world. It seems that the relationship between an artist‘s persona and their work is magnified, sometimes to the point where it feels forced upon the creator.
Throughout the process of realizing the show, reading through the proposals and talking to the artists we witnessed a multiple of different approaches and motivations behind working under a pseudonym, taking the concept and making it their own. Some artists created entire personas through which they viewed the world and hence worked. Some artists allowed this to show a piece that they already produced yet just haven’t found a context that seemed fitting. Some artists used this space to propose a work they said was a little too personal under the usual circumstances. For some artists creating work under a pseudonym was their long awaited personal permission to try out an entirely new medium. Often the motivation was to experiment light heartedly, and often it was to express freely.
Not only did the artwork created under pseudonyms bear unique identities, but the pseudonyms themselves took on lives of their own. Some pseudonyms seamlessly fit into the conceptual framework of the art, while others were shaped by a multitude of influences, becoming distinct entities in their own right.
Under the show “Bubble Bath“ a variety of approaches are assembled deconstructing and constructing the idea of an artist‘s identity.
Curated by Jakob Francisco and Lena Stewens
Photos by Jakob Otter
Heavy Rotation
01.09.2023 – 17.09.2023
01.09.2023 – 17.09.2023
Thomas Bratzke, Marek Kochanowicz, Benjamin Kunath, Sonja Prochorow, Isabell Ratzinger, Lourenço Soares and Miriam Steinmacher
Wiederholungen sind meist angenehm, geben Sicherheit und Stabilität. Das erneute Auftreten des Gleichen verhindert unangenehme Überraschungen, aber es kann eine*n auch gefangenen nehmen.
Das täglich grüßende Murmeltier, das zu Beginn humorvoll, doch irgendwann in Verzweiflung umkippt. Die Gleichförmigkeit, die von der Realität der Arbeit bestimmt wird. Der Alltag, dessen Wirklichkeit sich scheinbar kaum zu entziehen ist.
Die Ausstellung Heavy Rotation bei Magma Maria widmet sich mit 7 unterschiedlichen Positionen den Themen Wiederholungen, Loops, Sequenzen, Serien und den Zwischenräumen.
Abstände zwischen den Schlägen machen erst den Rhythmus und die Pausen geben den Takt an.
Curated by Marc Schamuthe and Johannes Schwalm
Photos by Jakob Otter
Wiederholungen sind meist angenehm, geben Sicherheit und Stabilität. Das erneute Auftreten des Gleichen verhindert unangenehme Überraschungen, aber es kann eine*n auch gefangenen nehmen.
Das täglich grüßende Murmeltier, das zu Beginn humorvoll, doch irgendwann in Verzweiflung umkippt. Die Gleichförmigkeit, die von der Realität der Arbeit bestimmt wird. Der Alltag, dessen Wirklichkeit sich scheinbar kaum zu entziehen ist.
Die Ausstellung Heavy Rotation bei Magma Maria widmet sich mit 7 unterschiedlichen Positionen den Themen Wiederholungen, Loops, Sequenzen, Serien und den Zwischenräumen.
Abstände zwischen den Schlägen machen erst den Rhythmus und die Pausen geben den Takt an.
Curated by Marc Schamuthe and Johannes Schwalm
Photos by Jakob Otter
Marcations
11.08.2023 – 27.08.2023
11.08.2023 – 27.08.2023
Kaïs Dhifi, Tornike Gognadze, Clara Reiner, Ishmat Habib and Lilli Thiessen
If someone were to run their fingers along the glass facade of the exhibition venue, they might encounter a couple of things along the way. Those encounters are signs that hint at the somewhat unusual character of the place. The hand might meet: Several varieties of spiders (their webs also), as well as a myriad of other critters, some live, some only as exoskeletal remains (in the spider webs), sticky patches of melted ice cream or soda dried-up on the surface and, by chance, a hole, mended haphazardly with silicone - injected into the space between the enormous panes, likely torn into the glass curtain by stones or even an occasional bullet. The building that hosts the exhibition venue is cleverly designed to provide a spacious open-plan ground floor, with only few concrete pillars diverting the gravitational force of the residential complex towering above into the ground below. To create attraction, almost total visibility of the interior is granted by the wrap-around windows. Recurring now to the bullet hitting the glass, shattering and fragmenting what was initially conceived to be a transparent shield, at once referring the public to its place outside by means of its rigid impermeability and luring it towards whatever is offered up inside, it appears that the screen gains something of a life of its own. The marks left on the surface by chance or deliberate action are traced onto the interior walls by the sunlight pouring in. The alterations and manipulations, having transformed the invisible plane into a visible structure that now appears deficient and precarious in its progressing state of disrepair, allude to the complex relationships that involve the processes of using, manipulating, and creating exterior surfaces. Whether it be by choice or by default, the surfaces act as interfaces of communication, turning superficiality into outward projection of inscribed meaning. Their material makeup alone gives rise to associations about societal relations and inherent power dynamics that may only become apparent through acts of appropriation. The manifold ways in which information is communicated determine who is taking part in the exchange and how they are being addressed. Hence design and manipulation of any exterior surface, using flatness and visibility, allow for subversion and critique. By extension, art practices that involve the making and unmaking of communications via surface manipulation may illustrate different facets of these potentials. For „Marcations“, we invited artists whose works showcase different approaches to realizing the inherent communicative trait of the flat plane. Operating with methods such as humorous appropriation, refiguration of materials, deformation of spatial imaginaries and invocation of vernacular and traditional stories, the works make a case for a contemporary discourse on a specific ‘school’ of art-making. A discourse that extends traditional notions of- and opens up new perspectives on working with flat planes and withstands being overdetermined by and absorbed into the self-referential theoretical abstractions taught in art history.
Curated by Timon Sioulvegas, Jakob Francisco, Marina Köstel and Johannes Schwalm
Text by Timon Sioulvegas
Photos by Charlotte Berg
If someone were to run their fingers along the glass facade of the exhibition venue, they might encounter a couple of things along the way. Those encounters are signs that hint at the somewhat unusual character of the place. The hand might meet: Several varieties of spiders (their webs also), as well as a myriad of other critters, some live, some only as exoskeletal remains (in the spider webs), sticky patches of melted ice cream or soda dried-up on the surface and, by chance, a hole, mended haphazardly with silicone - injected into the space between the enormous panes, likely torn into the glass curtain by stones or even an occasional bullet. The building that hosts the exhibition venue is cleverly designed to provide a spacious open-plan ground floor, with only few concrete pillars diverting the gravitational force of the residential complex towering above into the ground below. To create attraction, almost total visibility of the interior is granted by the wrap-around windows. Recurring now to the bullet hitting the glass, shattering and fragmenting what was initially conceived to be a transparent shield, at once referring the public to its place outside by means of its rigid impermeability and luring it towards whatever is offered up inside, it appears that the screen gains something of a life of its own. The marks left on the surface by chance or deliberate action are traced onto the interior walls by the sunlight pouring in. The alterations and manipulations, having transformed the invisible plane into a visible structure that now appears deficient and precarious in its progressing state of disrepair, allude to the complex relationships that involve the processes of using, manipulating, and creating exterior surfaces. Whether it be by choice or by default, the surfaces act as interfaces of communication, turning superficiality into outward projection of inscribed meaning. Their material makeup alone gives rise to associations about societal relations and inherent power dynamics that may only become apparent through acts of appropriation. The manifold ways in which information is communicated determine who is taking part in the exchange and how they are being addressed. Hence design and manipulation of any exterior surface, using flatness and visibility, allow for subversion and critique. By extension, art practices that involve the making and unmaking of communications via surface manipulation may illustrate different facets of these potentials. For „Marcations“, we invited artists whose works showcase different approaches to realizing the inherent communicative trait of the flat plane. Operating with methods such as humorous appropriation, refiguration of materials, deformation of spatial imaginaries and invocation of vernacular and traditional stories, the works make a case for a contemporary discourse on a specific ‘school’ of art-making. A discourse that extends traditional notions of- and opens up new perspectives on working with flat planes and withstands being overdetermined by and absorbed into the self-referential theoretical abstractions taught in art history.
Curated by Timon Sioulvegas, Jakob Francisco, Marina Köstel and Johannes Schwalm
Text by Timon Sioulvegas
Photos by Charlotte Berg
Haunted Bodies – Of Subjects, Cyborgs and Ghosts
07.07.2023 – 04.08.2023
07.07.2023 – 04.08.2023
Neven Allgeier & Samantha Bohatsch, Louisa Clement, Un-Zu Ha-Nul Lee, Maria Moritz, Murat Önen, Evelyn Plaschg and Julius Pristauz
The paradox of the body is that there is no outside. The moment we speak and think about it, we always do so from our own embodied position - with and through our body. The self-understanding with which we establish ourselves as subjects is mostly formed through the distinction from the Other: We recognise ourselves and we recognise the other, we know who we are, who belongs to us and who doesn't. This mode also forms the breeding ground for our own bodily position. This modus thereby also constitutes the breeding ground for conflicts. The collective "we" only grows in demarcation from the collective "other". In her monograph "Excitable Speech. A Politics of the performance" (1997), the philosopher Judith Butler considers this as the origin of violence. They are directed at the vulnerability of the body and legitimise themselves through the emphasis on the bodily alien. Another paradox - complicating the latter rather than standing alongside it as an accomplice - is the digital presence of bodies. Through our digital identities, we surrender our corporeality, alienating ourselves from its presence in favour of a disembodied, ghostly presence that takes place within us but also simultaneously outside of us. The idea that body and consciousness are separate and the former merely serves as a shell for the latter is thus outdated for the present, even if it cannot simply be dissolved into the contrary. With the transfer to the digital, we might be moving back into an actual dissolution of the carnal body, towards a digitally expanded corporeality. But this dissolution is certainly not a turning away from the physical body. Back in the corporeal present, the body is nevertheless always emphasised as the main medium of the subjective. We are talking about the optimisation of bodies, disciplining of bodies, projections and reflections on and against them, all of which exist simultaneously, as the body oscillates between body surface and political object. However, instead of the body being autonomous (think of modes of contemplation or the argument that the body functions as a visual communication surface), it is much more the bodily archive of biopolitical power effects. In the net of life, our bodies are confronted with altered capitalist techniques of value creation that haunt our inner as well as outer subjectivity. Thus, the body of the present, in its corporeality, exists as one without sovereignty, as it is shaped by discursive powers, whether through the finding of its own contour by the Other or through biopolitical, scientific, economic or visual practices. The body of the present is one without form, one haunted by ghosts, a haunted body. The body of the present is one that is only formed through the performative living and experience, through the incarnation of the norm, through the existence of organised spaces of action. The interest of the exhibition Haunted Bodies. Of Subjects, Cyborgs and Ghosts is to explore visual representations of specific subject configurations in their mediality and artistic language and to bring them into dialogue with each other. What powers are realised in the artistic identity-body-subject designs? The invited positions negotiate different power structures on and with the body through their sculptural, painterly, photographic and performative practices.
Curated by Seda Pesen, Leon Jankowiak
Text by Seda Pesen, Leon Jankowiak
Photos by Jakob Otter
The paradox of the body is that there is no outside. The moment we speak and think about it, we always do so from our own embodied position - with and through our body. The self-understanding with which we establish ourselves as subjects is mostly formed through the distinction from the Other: We recognise ourselves and we recognise the other, we know who we are, who belongs to us and who doesn't. This mode also forms the breeding ground for our own bodily position. This modus thereby also constitutes the breeding ground for conflicts. The collective "we" only grows in demarcation from the collective "other". In her monograph "Excitable Speech. A Politics of the performance" (1997), the philosopher Judith Butler considers this as the origin of violence. They are directed at the vulnerability of the body and legitimise themselves through the emphasis on the bodily alien. Another paradox - complicating the latter rather than standing alongside it as an accomplice - is the digital presence of bodies. Through our digital identities, we surrender our corporeality, alienating ourselves from its presence in favour of a disembodied, ghostly presence that takes place within us but also simultaneously outside of us. The idea that body and consciousness are separate and the former merely serves as a shell for the latter is thus outdated for the present, even if it cannot simply be dissolved into the contrary. With the transfer to the digital, we might be moving back into an actual dissolution of the carnal body, towards a digitally expanded corporeality. But this dissolution is certainly not a turning away from the physical body. Back in the corporeal present, the body is nevertheless always emphasised as the main medium of the subjective. We are talking about the optimisation of bodies, disciplining of bodies, projections and reflections on and against them, all of which exist simultaneously, as the body oscillates between body surface and political object. However, instead of the body being autonomous (think of modes of contemplation or the argument that the body functions as a visual communication surface), it is much more the bodily archive of biopolitical power effects. In the net of life, our bodies are confronted with altered capitalist techniques of value creation that haunt our inner as well as outer subjectivity. Thus, the body of the present, in its corporeality, exists as one without sovereignty, as it is shaped by discursive powers, whether through the finding of its own contour by the Other or through biopolitical, scientific, economic or visual practices. The body of the present is one without form, one haunted by ghosts, a haunted body. The body of the present is one that is only formed through the performative living and experience, through the incarnation of the norm, through the existence of organised spaces of action. The interest of the exhibition Haunted Bodies. Of Subjects, Cyborgs and Ghosts is to explore visual representations of specific subject configurations in their mediality and artistic language and to bring them into dialogue with each other. What powers are realised in the artistic identity-body-subject designs? The invited positions negotiate different power structures on and with the body through their sculptural, painterly, photographic and performative practices.
Curated by Seda Pesen, Leon Jankowiak
Text by Seda Pesen, Leon Jankowiak
Photos by Jakob Otter