HENRIK OLESEN | HEY PANOPTICON! HEY ASYMMETRY! + PROOF OF WORK | CURATED BY SIMON DENNY IN DIALOGUE WITH DISTRIBUTED GALLERY, HARM VAN DEN DORPEL, SARAH HAMERMAN AND SAM HART, KEI KREUTLER, AUDE LAUNAY AND ANNA-LISA SCHERFOSE @ SCHINKEL PAVILLON | 8.9- 21.12.2018

Exhibition view, Hey Panopticon! Hey Asymmetry!, Schinkel Pavillon, 2018, Berlin Photo: Jens Ziehe

CryptoKitties/Guile Gaspar
Celestial Cyber Dimension, (Kitty.127), 2018, CryptoKytty, hardware, wallet, display case, Dimension undefinable 
Courtesy Private Collection
Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul 


Henrik Olesen
Hey Panopticon! Hey Asymmetry!
+
Proof of Work
curated by Simon Dennyin dialogue with Distributed Gallery, Harm Van Den Dorpel, Sarah Hamerman and Sam Hart, Kei Kreutler, Aude Launay and Anna-Lisa Scherfose.

Schinkel Pavillon

8.9 - 21.12.2018

The future of the Society of Control is the link between the two exhibitions at the Schinkel Pavillon, “Oh Panopticon! Hey Asymmetry!” by Henrik Olesen Presented in the Pavilion and “Proof of Work - art/ cryptocurrency”, a group show curated by Simon Denny in dialogue with Distributed Gallery, Harm van den Dorpel, Sarah Hamerman and Sam Hart, Kei Kreutler, Aude Launay and Anna-Lisa Scherfose, presented in the crypt.

The two exhibition analyzes the same theme but head in two different directions.

Henrik Olesen, who is showing his works in Berlin after a long time of absence, is directly addressing the topic. “Proof of Works” seems to want to stretch the conditions of our economic society to its extreme consequences, offering the vision of its own limit.

The starting point of Olesen’s exhibition is the architectural organization of the Schinkel Pavillon that the artist explicitly associates to Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michael Foucault.

Institutions analyzed in Foucault’s book, like the prison, are organized in a way that there is one observer who has a privileged point of view and have the power to control a multiplicity of individuals.  At the same time the structure of the Schinkel Pavillon is built to give a 360-degree control viewpoint on Berlin’s landscape.

Olesen plays over this connection to create a scenario where the game between viewer and viewed is constantly alterated.

In the entrance to the exhibition a wall is blocking the passage, it is the obstacle but also the mediator and the artwork to the view of the exhibition.

On the opposite side of the wall there is a series of colored boxes with a side in plexiglas. Inside the boxes there are differents printed papers with the same motives recurring in the show. On some of the windows, black canvas with printed quotations from Discipline and Punish or the title of the show are blocking the view of the landscape. Colored wood panels are placed on the floor in the middle of the room. On the top of it a collection of everydays food utilities coloured or black painted.

Olesen built an ambivalent structure. The freedom of seeing and knowing is constantly limited but at the same time this limitations are the conditions for us to see and know the reality.

Referring to: The Master-Slave-Dialectic!, 2018 Plexiglass, glue
160 x 152 x 31 cm
Unique
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Buchholz Photo: Jens Ziehe

Exhibition view, Hey Panopticon! Hey Asymmetry!, Schinkel Pavillon, 2018, Berlin Photo: Jens Ziehe

Discipline and Punish, 2018
Silkscreen on MDF, acrylic paint
140 x 110 cm
Unique
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Buchholz Photo: Jens Ziehe

HEY PANOPTICON 1, 2018
Acrylic paint on MDF, plexiglas, inkjet print on transparent foil 69 x 50,5 x 7,5 cm
Unique
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Buchholz
Photo: Jens Ziehe

The Discipline and Punish Box!, 2018 Cardboard, print on film
31 x 51 x 41 cm
Unique
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Buchholz Photo: Jens Ziehe

Box, 2018
Silkscreen on wood, acrylic paint, lacquer, inkjet print on paper, plexiglas 32 x 39 x 32 cm
Unique
Courtesy the artist and Galerie Buchholz
Photo: Jens Ziehe

The economical drift is at the center of the group show ”Proof of Work”, with works and projects by Cryptokitties, Aria Dean, Distributed Gallery, Harm Van den Dorpel, FOAM ( Ryan Kohn King, Ekaterina Zavyalova, Nick Axel and Kristoffer Josefsson), Sarah Herman and Sam Hart, Decentralized Autonomous Kunstverein ( Nick Koppenhagen and Wesley Simon, Kei Kreutler, Left Gallery ( Harm Van den Dorpel and Paloma Rodriguez Carrington ), Wayne Lloyd, Mark Lombardi, Jonas Lund, Rob Myres, Hayal Pozanti, Billy Rennekamp, Jason Rohrer, Miljohn Ruperto and Ulrik Helftoft, 0XΩ ( Avery Singer and Matt Liston ), Terra0 ( Paul Seidler, Paul Kolling and Max Hampshire ), with a conversation program by New Models ( Caroline Busta, Lil Internet, Daniel Keller ). 

FOAM (Ryan John King, Ekaterina Zavyalova, Nick Axel and Kristoffer Josefsson)
Tropical Mining Station, 2017
Pneumatic membrane, cryptocurrency miner, plexiglas casing, plinth, fans Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artists Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul

The curators drew a rhizomatic structure to produce the exhibition. This structure repeat a system of Cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin. This exhibition is also a way for people like me, who is not so practical with the matter, to get closer to this topic. In this alternative economic system, a Proof of Work is a safety procedure to guarantee the value and the transparency of a currency. This is a decentralized, self-organized system based on a general consensus. And which aim to produce a new system of regulations where there is no third party do discriminate and define value.

Every artworks in the exhibition is at the same time re-cycling elements from the cryptocurrency system to transform it in art: the Chaos Machine, 2018 by Distributed Gallery is a machine who eats and burns EU money, changing it in a Bitcoins, that could be used to play music as a Jukebox; Tropical Mining Station, 2017 by FOAM (Ryan John King, Ekaterina Zavyalova, Nick Axel and Kristoffer Josefsson) is a huge balloon inflated by a cryptocurrency miner software; Harm van den Dorpel’s Nested Exchange Series is a group of drawings realized by an automated process created by the artist himself. A special mention goes to Celestial Cyber Dimension, (Kitty. 127), 2018 by CryptoKitties/Guile Gaspar that is described by the curatorial team as “one of the most notorious crossovers between an art context and a blockchain”. Cryptokitties is a blockchain based virtual game that became very popular in 2017 and was sold at a Christie’s auction for $ 140,000. The artwork shows a possible way to expand and innovate the channels of economical exchanges. Sam Hart and Sarah Hamerman selected a group of works for a section focused on the topic of secrecy which is extremely important in matter of cryptocurrency.

The extremely appealing exhibition crosses the path of an alternative economic system where freedom is accessible only in a cryptic way to the ones who can understand it. 

Distributed Gallery

 Chaos Machine, 2018 Various material

192 x 52 x 52 cm

Courtesy Distributed Gallery

CryptoKitties/Guile Gaspar
Celestial Cyber Dimension, (Kitty. 127), 2018 Detail
Courtesy Private Collection
Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul

Wayne Lloyd
How We Won the War on Socialism, 2000 Oil and acrylic on canvas
216 x 164.5 x 5.5 cm
Courtesy the artist
Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul

Billy Rennekamp
Leather Spheres, 2013
Leather, thread, and rubber mounted with The Ball ClawTM Dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist
Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul

0xΩ (Matt Liston and Avery Singer) Dogewhal, 2018
3D print, stainless steel
43 x 28 x 43 cm
Courtesy the artists and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin
Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul

Exhibition view, Proof of Work, Schinkel Pavillon, 2018, Berlin Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul

Exhibition view
Proof of Work
Schinkel Pavillon, 2018, Berlin Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul

Harm van den Dorpel

Lammer Asbestus, 2018

Multi layered UV prints with white channel between CNC-cut plexiglass, packaging material, screw system, 100 x 100 x 3 cm

Courtesy the artist and Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam 

Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul 

Isa Genzken ISSIE ENERGIE @ König Galerie, Berlin

"Street's like a jungle

so call the police

following the herd

down to Greece..."

Blur, Girls and boys

A group of dummies dressed with a sort of waterproof plastic mantles and two children's 

dummies with extra large T-shirts are the first bodies to emerge distinctly from the horde of 

objects that fills up the nave of the former Brutalist-style church now home to the König galerie.

The dummies or Schauspieler are, one could say, a peculiar element of Isa Genzken practice. 

The puppets are standing, as if conversing among themselves. On the wall near them are hanging 

metal panels on which there are clippings of newspapers, photographs of the artist, of her life, of 

works, of other exhibitions etcc. The collages are crowded by images like in one of those 

movies where a detective is hunting a serial killer and pins all the clue on a board.

Adhesive tapes in bright colors coverü other panels. The stripes come and go from one side to 

the other; they are an obstacle to the vision, containment tapes, which obscure the shimmering 

surface of the metal. The tape is the restraint but also its own end. From this grid, however, 

what transpires is not a glint of life but an irrepressible flow of energy.

The panels run around the space of the nave.  All the other works are contained in it: sculptures 

made of blocks of cement piled on one another or cut like scalar pyramids with strange steel 

antennas, fake busts of Nefertiti with sunglasses and the dummies, which seem to compete with

visitors to gain space in the crowded monumental nave of the ex-church, built by Werner Düttmann
 and restored by Arno Brandlhuber. Two dummies are laying on each other, as if  making love.

At the bottom of the nave, in right corner, there is a photograph portrait of the artist 

Isa Genzken. "This foto was made at my first trip in New York 1971" is written on it.

She is the beginning of it. The starting point of the motion of energy. It crosses all things and 

connects them to each other. The flow of desire generated by a young Issie overwhelms 

everithing around her even herself. The  energy does not come from an inner withdrawal of 

the artist in her consciousness, but is the drift of the world around it. It cannot be triangulated.

Every work is a station, a ring, a conjunction, which stands for itself, indipendent, but also 

together with the others.

A flow of desire is not always an idyll. The masked dummies, the actors, are the revealed 

fiction, but also a transformation. Each identity is simulated.

The dummies are placed inside a forest of other images and sculptures like the vertical 

blocks made of cement, this amorphous material at the base of most of the current buildings. 

Cement, too, is a sign of transformation, in a sense it can become anything and be nothing. 

Then there are the nefertiti with sunglasses that are a joke, a declassation.

The artist is often defined as a heir to constructivism but seems to overcome all definitions.

All the works in the exhibition are born in different moments of the artist's life. They are a 

horde without control, pure desire, liberated, seen together like this; Those works placed in a

former church, symbol of the extreme repression exercised on the society by ideology they are  

an explosive element.

This aspect of the exhibition impressed me very much.

The gallery is a place of folding up of the reality, often to propose a synthetic experience, 

intensified of reality.

In this former church, the ideas of ​​elevation, repression and sublimation, which belong to the 

sacred place on one side and on the other the intensified experience of the artwork, slide on 

another level. The emptiness of a form is turned into a "concrete" weight, bouncing ambitions, 

desires and dreams, on a real dimension that brings back the flow of desire.

The church - gallery is not the place of perfection or of unfulfilled aspirations, projected on an 

other-life that never comes. It is the ‘here and now’ of desire under the experience of art: the 

endless stream of energy that always produces new axioms, that absorbs everything, 

incorporates everything and everyone and of which Isa Genzken's horde is the interminable 

external limit.

Isa Genzken ISSIE ENERGIE

11.11.17 - 7.1.2018

König Galerie, Berlin

www.koeniggalerie.com