When you’re John Baldessari, you can get Tom Waits to narrate your life. This film was commissioned by LACMA for their first annual “Art + Film Gala” honouring John Baldessari and another one of Sleek’s heroes, Clint Eastwood. Directed by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman
baldessari.org

Sâdane Afif Stereo (DATRARC), 2010 Wood, cloth, metal, MP3-player, amplifier, boxes, light bulbs, fluorescent lamp, wire, framed poster Courtesy Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin Foto: Jan Windszus, Berlin

Made in Germany Zwei is a major survey of works by local and international young artists living in Germany. The ambitious exhibition takes place for the second time this year, to coincide with Kassel’s Documenta. Spread across three institutions in the city of Hannover, the show’s roster spans some 50 artists under 40, as varied in styles as, say, Klara Lidén, Alexandra Bircken and AIDS 3D, to explores the major themes that preoccupy the young art scene coming out of Germany today.

MADE IN GERMANY ZWEI
May 17 until August 19, 2012
Exhibition opening May 16, 2012, 5 pm Sprengel Museum Hannover

]]> http://www.sleek-mag.com/special-features/2012/05/made-in-germany-zwei/feed/ 0 http://www.sleek-mag.com/berlin/2012/05/kimberly-clark/ http://www.sleek-mag.com/berlin/2012/05/kimberly-clark/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:21 +0000 sleek team http://www.sleek-mag.com/?p=3641  

Kimbery Clark. Photo ©Maxime Ballesteros

Operating loudly and reflexively, this provocatively-named collective make statement installations, performances and interventions sourced from the dark recesses of consumer culture under the “Kimberly Clark” moniker. But who is the titular Kimberly – a porn star? A hygiene company? In fact, the name comes from when two of the collective’s three members, Dutch-born Iris van Dongen and Ellemieke Schoenmaker, were teenagers. Should they be apprehended while travelling on public transport without paying, Schoenmaker’s alias would be “Kimberly Clark” (when sleek’s portrait was taken, the latter was away in her Rotterdam hometown).

Hijacking the popular vernacular that has been a continuous theme in their attention-grabbing practice. Iris and third member Eveline van de Griend are both artists whose independent work utilises slower techniques – intricate painting and drawing – while working as Kimberly Clark they “felt it was necessary to do something opposite, or different, to keep the blood running.”  So far the collective have been responsible for bombastic projects including making a three-dimensional portrait of a woman sitting on a Louis Vuitton bag and holding up her hand for small change, a frenetic and hedonistic video entitled “Crusade Rotterdam”, and a performance where they walked around a shopping arcade dressed as a beheaded woman, as if wearing a high-end Halloween costume.

Though the pieces could be read as scathing critiques on the fashion industry and frivolous consumer culture, Iris explains that they are not interested in moralising, but instead injecting humour and distance. Kimberly Clark, she adds, is more “a reflection than a criticism”. But what a reflection…

 Text by Susanna Davies-Crook

]]> http://www.sleek-mag.com/berlin/2012/05/kimberly-clark/feed/ 0 http://www.sleek-mag.com/goodies/2012/05/win-a-pokket-mixer/ http://www.sleek-mag.com/goodies/2012/05/win-a-pokket-mixer/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 11:06:20 +0000 sleek team http://www.sleek-mag.com/?p=3623 Phones with endless playlists and featherweight laptops now allow anyone to carry their entire album collection with them at all times and burst out in spontaneous dance offs, but the madness is about to get a whole lot more professional!
Made in Berlin, the Pokket Mixer is an attractive little gadget that can turn amateur players into DIY DJs. Weighing only 130g, the pocket size mixer comes with inputs for two music sources, allowing you to mix, crossfade and equalize with a simple turn of the dial. Best thing is, no power source is needed. Just plug in to a laptop or MP3 player, connect to the speakers and you are ready to party. 5 lucky Sleek readers can win a Pokket Mixer by emailing get@sleekmag.com.

DIY Couture features ten collections ranging from flashy Rude Disco to romantic Tea Picnic. Each collection features a straight skirt, Grecian dress, skater skirt, waistcoat, cloak, slouch top, goddess dress, a hoody, trousers and romper, which vary according to collection’s theme. The step-by-step instructions are visual, simple and will give you the confidence to make clothes no one else is wearing. Get your scissors ready!

DIY Couture
Rosie Martin
870 colour illustrations, 208 pages
Laurence King Publishing

Text by Grashina Gabelmann

An apple-silver sushi machine atop faux-wood-print glass, an iconic Eighties silver-half-hand coffee table on which sits a trompe l’oeil replica IBM computer prototype designed by German industrial designer Richard Sapper, and created because workers did not trust the new flatscreens and preferred to continue their interaction with the computer as a cube. 

A calculator as standard in banking and a 3D chess board also lie at knee level in the young German artist’s first solo exhibition, which speaks of obsolescence and the rate of technological innovation and human/user interaction. His meticulous attention to aesthetic tropes and fascination with language of design significant to both the individual living with the product and the epoch, combine to produce a lexicon of quotation and half-recognisable items assembled in the gallery.  

Examining the intersections between 2D representations viewed from a single angle, say on a screen, and the sculptural 3D representation and hand-made reconstruction of things placed within the gallery, there is a crossover between everyday interior strategies for decoration and the established vernaculars of gallery display. 

Here, for instance, Auer reconstructs the curtains seen flowing in the background as Patricia Arquette and Charlie Sheen have sex in his luxury banker’s apartment in the 1980s film classic Wall St. Auer places them on lead, suggesting the fulfilment of desire but also the constant state of lust and longing associated with the aspirational credit-card high-living of the Eighties. We live in financial times.

Writer and curator Susanna Davies-Crook caught up with the artist to discuss his exhibition currently on view at Kraupa Tuskany, in Berlin.

Where did the title for the show come from?
From a supplement called ‘How to Spend It’, which is part of the Financial Times newspaper. It comes out eight times a year, always with the weekend edition. I know the magazine because my best friend is a banker and he had the newspaper delivered since he was a teenager. I always saw the newspaper through different eyes. When I was 15 it was full of cars, nice hotels, luxury watches, and the way it was presented was basically the highest level in which you can present an object – or a destiny. I decided on this title because if you read it within an art context you immediately think it’s about collectors or the art market, but if you see the show it’s about something else. I like it because it sounds like a question you would ask yourself and not something you’d ask somebody else.

Obviously at the moment this issue is quite pertinent because of the current political and financial climate. How much did that influence you?
I have been thinking about the aesthetics of banking for about five years or so, and then there was this thing with Occupy Wall Street, then there was a similar one in Frankfurt, Occupy Frankfurt, and my criticism is of how they deal with aesthetics. I’m using five objects all related to the Eighties: a sushi machine for home, a calculator, then a model of a prototype flatscreen computer made for IBM in 1987. It’s a grey box. There are only three prototypes in the world, one at the MoMA, one at IBM and one with a private collector. The idea of the prototype was a flatscreen with perspective [so] that when you sit in front of the computer you have the feeling that there’s a big block behind the screen. Richard Sapper invented it because he had a big block of blank paper on his table, so when he looked to the left  he had this 3D perspective.

Are you reconstructing these objects?
The idea with all these objects is that 98.9% of people never saw them in real life, and didn’t even know they existed. The Sushi machine, some people might know abput but most only saw it in movies. The IBM prototype you can only see in pictures, and the calculator is a special one only bankers use. I’m trying to deal with bankers as a real subculture, like punk or graffiti, meaning, they have their own codes and aesthetics, and everything else that makes a subculture a subculture. There’s also a 3D chessboard used in Star Trek in 1987 and featured in every episode where they play chess in a futuristic style. It’s a thinking sport; lots of bankers or intellectual thinkers play chess to train their brain.

Are you really interested in the aesthetics of the interior?
Yeah, in the film Wall St. there’s a five-minute scene with a Talking Heads soundtrack of ‘This must be the place”. Basically, Charlie Sheen’s character is moving into this apartment he’s decorating and Daryl Hannah, who plays the interior designer, shows him the newest “coolest” art. They use Julian Schnabel paintings, they buy the newest technical stuff like the sushi machine, they have amazing lamps, all based on the idea of decorating the apartment in the coolest way possible in the Eighties, including art to prove your taste. I’m using the film as a reference but the work is not about the film, the film inspied a lot of people to become bankers, it’s a motivation for me.

So you’re using aesthetic tropes and style guides?
Yeah, it’s important to mention that I’m not presenting a nostalgic viewpoint, so the objects are shown on glass with the reflection underneath. Today if you see a calculator or a car in a magazine they always have a deep shadow and a black outline to make an object look three-dimensional and accessible, like they do in  How to Spend It for example.

There’s a discussion in your work about the aesthetics of technology, how do you negotiate those relationships?
As an example, it stressed me out to install Photoshop. I have no idea about Photoshop, what it’s worth or how it’s made. I’m not interested in computers, I’m not interested in a Macbook as a tool, I’m just using it like everybody else, too. But, what does it mean to have a Macbook aesthetically in your studio and what does it mean to have a Photoshop file open next to a spray can and a piece of wood, what does that mean? You have a real object and you have an image of an object in 3D right next to each other, this is what drives me to work in this direction. For example the IBM screen – its’ not about the invention of the flatscreen but more about how did the flatscreen change office environment? Of course it’s a big decision [for me] to make all these objects and not to order them online or loan them. I try to incorporate shadows in the objects so they look more like an image. I make sculptures but I’m more satisfied when I go to shows to look at paintings because they have no use in a sense. With sculptures you can walk around them and you have the feeling of how heavy they are and I don’t like that. If my sculptures were more like a flat image I would be satisfied. I’m more a fan of painters than sculptors.

How did you decide to do sculpture?
I applied for a painting class and submitted collages. Then the sculpture tutor wanted me, so I have always been searching for solutions to make sculpture.

What made you want to be an artist?
I was fascinated with the style of artists and the way they’re allowed to behave in society – and what the artist means as a cliché.

Florian Auer
How to Spend It
Until May 26
Kraupa-Tuskany, Berlin

Text by Susanna Davies-Crook

The latest collaboration between the Galliera Museum and Les Docks – Cité de la Mode et du Design, presents two of fashion’s most respected designers in ‘Cistóbal Balenciaga collector of fashions’ and Rei Kawakubo’s ‘Comme des Garçons White Drama’. For the former, this extensive display of work pays homage to the “Couturiers of couturiers” marking the fortieth anniversary after his death. The latter, always one to let her innovations speak for themselves, has redefined the classic fashion show allowing her Spring/Summer 2012 White Drama collection to transform itself into an impressive art installation.

This latest tribute to Balenciaga includes over seventy ensembles displayed alongside forty haute-couture coats and dresses designed between 1937 and 1968. Stays, satin torero costumes, lace mantillas, samples of embroidery and more make up this rich display of history spanning the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Themes include traditional Spanish folklore, strict religious and ceremonial robes together with notorious black and somber colours. This vast display works in tandem with the exhibition’s layout; the behind the scenes sensation of trawling amongst long rows of metal rails and sliding draws invites the visitor into Cristóbal Balenciaga’s museum of the imagination. No doubt, sharing the creative intimacy of this master of fashion (1895-1972) leaves a lasting impression. 

In the adjacent gallery, Kawakubo’s masterpiece takes place. Giant inflatable transparent domes house her White Drama 2012 collection – pure ceremonial white of every hue. A colour synonymous with life’s major events; birth, marriage, death and transcendence.  Forced to weave around these commanding installations, visitors experience a unique fashion event – no numbered seats, no catwalk, no carefully timed parades. Up close and in detail they witness the likes of budding flowers, layered handkerchiefs, lace insets inspired by christening robes and even a wedding gown mimicking the silk cocoon of an insect. Furthermore, the diverse range of fabrics enhances the deceiving simplicity of this quasi-monochrome display. Treated and refined, shiny and mat, opaque and sheer, they allow these creations to take on a vibrant life of their own. In the words of Kawakubo, ‘with creation as [her] sword’ her latest endeavour pushes the boundaries of art and fashion once again.  

Text by Pascale Barget

Galliera Museum
April 13th – October 7th 2012

Courtesy Karma International Zurich and the artist

 Abandoned items seized the space of AUTOCENTER, an independent exhibition space in Berlin – Friedrichshain. Broken blinds, fragments of plastic bags, aluminium panels taken from air- condition units, radiators or rolled doormats occupy the room and squat it in their own way – which makes a slovenly and derelict impression. However, these are precisely organised artifacts made by artists from SALTS – a contemporary art salon located in Birsfelden / Basen in Switzerland. The project came to Berlin as a part of mutual exchange (last summer SALT showed artists form AUTOCENTER) and creates bridge not only between two cities or two art-spaces but, above all, forms a discourse on the recent works by international artists.

 “Stepping stone” plays with the inherent and essential nature of the things that surround us but do not pay attention to in everyday life. Things which are somewhere hidden or they are too obvious to catch our sight. The artists taking part in the show (Frank Altmann, Awst & Walther, Nina Beier, Eva Berendes, Stefan Burger, Martin Soto Climent, Adam Thompson) not only bring them to light but, moreover, questioning and “recycling” their widespread applications. The exhibition space looks as if the artists appropriated objects contained therein. Through rejecting the concept of mass production, they find the absurd in what is regarded as handicraft and manufactured.  They create the environment where what seemed to be familiar becoming unknown.  In the middle of the room suspends the work by Martin Soto Climent’s  (“Graffiti Blind”, 2010) – abstract sculpture made of blinds painted with spray paint, inspired by abandoned houses in the artist’s home town of Mexico City. The sharp shape of the metallic blind became more subtle and dynamic, twirling around its axis, lost its intended function.

The words “domestic” and “industrial” take new meanings.  What was considered to be not personal becomes personal by marking it with artistic individuality. In the same time referring to global society and economy, consumption and wear and tear it becomes political without showing politics.

In Nina Beier’s “The Demonstrators (Broken Rope)” posters of ripped ropes are draped over the radiators as towels that need drying. In fact they are stuck to it. Those stock images taken from publicity accessible database refer to absurd of visual culture, where everything is reduced to virtual representation.  Similar response can also be found in circle paintings created with fingerprints (Awst & Walther, “Biometric Paintings”, 2012), which one of its meaning may relate to socio – political aspect of the pervasive dominance of technology in controlling our identities. 

Exhibited works through its form also take on a discussion about the role of abstraction in contemporary art and its representation today, putting questions whether it can be a dynamic platform for the public realm. One of the most significant examples is Frank Altmann’s “Abstract 11”(2011). His slides made of pieces cut out of plastic bags look like geometric paintings from the beginning of 20^th century. There is something sad inside them, some kind of nostalgia. On one hand they are homage to the masters of modern art, on the other  – Altmann plays with the meanings of the original and reproduction and its sense in the contemporary consumer world.  

The presentation deals with the tradition of modernist discourse, initiated by Dada movement – what is art and what is not (but it’s no longer interested in designated objects as art by placing them into the gallery) and where are the boundaries – if there are any – between subject and its significance, material and idea, private and public. 

Text by Weronika Trojanska

The Danish fine jewellery designer Sophie Bille Brahe, has paired up with the Swedish affordable high street brand, Weekday, for a new jewellery collaboration. London’s Royal College of Art graduate Sophie Bille Brahe may not have been on the jewellery circuit for long, but she already has a cult following her elegant, avant-garde designs, with many high profile personalities amongst her clients.

The collection for Weekday, called “L’Escalier”, will feature a range of earrings, necklaces and rings, all of which reflect her love of geometric shapes, the clean aesthetics of fellow Danish jewellery designer Georg Jensen, and the drawings of Piero Fornasetti. Brahe spoke about her inspirations for the collection saying; “the inspiration for the L’Escalier collection is a mix up of many things I adore.I want to do something you don’t get bored with, something you continue to fall in love with it again and again.”

The L’Escalier by Sophie Bille Brahe collection will be available at Weekday stores from the beginning of August 2012.

The trilogy, outlining the movement’s emergence, its first Jewish settlements in Poland, and the inevitable assassination of its leader, is an unsparing – albeit hilarious – glance at Israeli society, and the promise, as against the current reality, that arose from the Zionist movement. It’s also about the way Europe deals with immigration today, Bartana says. “And of course, the aesthetic language of propaganda and political manipulation. I made sure there was something in it to anger everybody” she adds, laughing. The power of the trilogy lies in the variety of readings it offers according to the viewer’s personal history and background. “In Russia, people were enraged by the use of Stalinist aesthetics; in Poland, they were struck by the story of the leader’s martyrdom, is an idea deeply rooted in Polish cultural heritage. In Israel, where I’m from, people accused me of lots of ugly things.”

The film project came about after Bartana visited Poland in 2006. “I was overwhelmed by the void. You walk around and hear, ‘This used to be the Jewish quarter’ quite a lot. So I started to imagine what it would be like. The ability to envision a different reality starts with the power to imagine, and with leaving fear of change behind.” The trilogy’s message is deeply ambivalent; confusion seems to be the point.

In the congress, held in conjunction with the Seventh Berlin Biennale, Bartana seeks to gather thinkers, activists, historians and anyone interested in challenging notions of national identity. “So the assassinated leader wrote a document where he describes his vision for Israel, Poland and Europe. The congress has a fictive narrative as its starting point, but I want to cross that threshold from fiction to reality. It’s megalomaniac and naïve at the same time,” she admits, “but I’m not interested in mere provocation. That’s boring. I’m looking for the point where art can actually effect change.” HP

The First Congress of the JRMiP will take place in Berlin, at HAU 1, May 11–13 2012. www.jrmip.org.
7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art,
April 27–July 1 2012.
www.berlinbiennale.de