Canell, Hultén, McBride, Staack

Konrad Fischer Galerie Berlin is pleased to announce the opening of the group exhibition Canell, Hultén, McBride, Staack on Friday, November 20, 2009 from 6 to 9 pm.

Questioning the fixity of physical forms and objects, Nina Canell’s work proposes a de-stabilisation of form through frequent incorporation of fleeting, contingent processes, such as electric currents, various perceptible and imperceptible frequencies, synchronisation and light. ´Temporary Encampment (Five Blue Solids)`, 2008 is a work which perhaps most explicitly utilises electromagnetism as a binding sculptural component. The installation activates, in a poetic way, a state of temporary balance between the push and pull of magnetism and the laws of gravity.

For a couple of years Sofia Hultén has been interested in the changability of objects, in particualar in recreating future and past states of objects. In ´Mutual Annihilation` (2008) Hultén laboriously restored a found cupboard, only to transfer it back to its ‘original’ state again, with all its found signs of wear and tear. Alongside the object itself, four video monitors document the process in a non-linear sequence. Mutual Annihilation as well as other works of Hultén suggest that neither the past nor the future should be understood as complete and closed.

Rita McBride's works often deal with architectural contexts and topics related to urban planning and design while at the same time critically disputing sociological and sociopolitical issues. In the idiosyncratic handling of various materials her work reveals a humurous and cryptic aesthetic which questions terms like seriality, standard, and function and with those the entire discourse around modernity and utopia. We will exhibit the floor piece ´Some Settlements (Caiba, Brazil)` 2008 and ´White Elephant (Wall)`, 2003.

Questioning the materiality of images Juergen Staack began in 2008 a series of works which focus on the transcription of photographs into pure language. On his extensive travels the artist has asked people who he accidentially meets to describe a polaroid photograph. After the description is made and on record, the people are asked to draw over the image with a black marker. Oftentimes the languages in which the images are described are dying or are only rarely spoken by a very small group of people which makes the process of transcription appear even more hermetic. We will present four works of the series ´Transcription - Image` showing the marked polaroids next to a headphone playing the verbal descriptions of the now invisible images.