ROBERT BOYD, XANADU 2006
Four-channel video installation, colour, sound, "22.00
NUMBER ONE: "DESTROY, SHE SAID"
18.06.2007 - 02.08.2008
The Julia Stashed Collection is a private collection of contemporary art focused on media and video art, installations and photography.
The collection has found a new home in the former production facilities of the Conzen frame factory. The building, which celebrates its centenary this year, was redeveloped from top to toe by the architectural firm Kühn Malvezzi to meet the particular requirements of the collection.
"The redistribution of space has created an entirely new building within the old shell: the higher roof and addition of skylights and a roof terrace combine to make a very clear statement. This more vertical organization supports the building's new function as a live-in art warehouse and exhibition space. A large opening connects the two main exhibition rooms and a delicate stairway leads up to the spacious attic floor and roof deck, 23 metres above the ground. The way up and down is the key to the whole design - a building that is less an object to look at than a path to follow. It leads through dark and light spaces, from the little cinema on the ground floor, on through two different exhibition storeys and up to the top floor with its 12-metre ceiling." (Wilfried Kühn, Kühn Malvezzi)
Its new home provides the Julia Stoschek Collection with two exhibition floors open to the public. For the opening exhibition, entitled Destroy, she said, Julia Stoschek has assembled approximately 40 creative statements from international artists on the subjects of construction / deconstruction and interior / exterior.
Some may recognise the title Destroy, she said from the novel of the same name by Marguerite Duras (Destruire, dit elle). However, the exhibition's title actually owes more to the two-part video installation Destroy She Said by Monica Bonvicini from 1998, which examines the role of women in auteur films of the 50s to 70s in a compilation of selected excerpts. It is remarkable to see how, even at the very zenith of the feminist movement, women were still being stereotyped as helpless creatures.
The pieces on show centre on extreme spatial, psychological and interpersonal situations. The two exhibition floors are also subdivided according to different questions and themes, both to highlight individual aspects of the works and open up the exhibition as a whole to explore further issues.
An exhibition entitled Destroy, she said is, of course, immediately associated with the theme of destruction, and indeed, this is an aspect reflected in much of the art shown. Examples of works that centre on the destruction of interiors and structures are Shades of Destructors by Mark Leckey and Hammering Out (an old argument) by Monica Bonvicini. In the piece Burn by artist duo Reynold Reynolds & Patrick Jolley, the cosy hearth at home is the destructive element, creating an atmosphere that is at once frightening and absurd.
By contrast, Paul Pfeiffer's Empire focuses on the subject of construction and the efficiency of hierarchical organisations wasps by documenting the laborious three-month process of wasps painstakingly building their nests.
Tony Oursler's three-part installation near the entrance presents a dialogue between urban indoor and outdoor spaces so complex that conventional designations and rules of what is "inside" and what "outside" are completely thrown off balance.
There is something profoundly unsettling and disturbing surrounding the act of destruction in the pieces by Robert Boyd and Adam McEwen. In the four-channel video installation Xanadu, Boyd focuses on the self-destructive impulses that characterise our society by condensing different elements of mass culture like news bites, documentaries, comics and pop music videos into a sequence of split-second images. The brutal and random interfaces reflect the media world we live in, where the boundaries between entertainment, information and horror have been virtually erased. McEwen's A-Line then proceeds to literally turn the world upside down by showing us the corpses of Benito Mussolini and Clara Petacci strung up outside a Milan petrol station for all the world to see.
The central work on the second floor is Doug Aitken's multi-channel installation Interiors. The seemingly incongruous stories of different people, which move the protagonists through various interiors and urban landscapes, are projected onto three translucent screens. The works of Anthony Burdin heighten this feeling of disorientation; the protagonist in his Desert Mix leads spectators through a series of bizarre places.
Spatial demarcations and marginalisation are another central theme of the show, exemplified in Thomas Demand's Fence and Taryn Simon's Calvin Washington. The work is from Simon's The Innocents, a series of photographs taken in 2002 of innocent people condemned to death at the scenes of their alleged crimes.
A number of works in the show are dedicated to the theme Circular Moves: Marina Abramovic's Relation in Movement, High Performance by Aaron Young, and Anthony McCall's Line Describing a Cone. McCall uses a 16mm film projector to direct light at a black surface; with the help of a smoke machine, the beam gradually becomes visible as a perfect cone of light. The space and the projection itself become a kind of sculpture that breaks down the traditional relationship between cinema viewers and the film projector.
We plan to follow up Destroy, she said with regular exhibitions highlighting different facets of the collection.
Artists
Marina Abramovic/ Ulay
*1946 in Belgrade.
Lives and works in New York.
Doug Aitken
*1968 in Redondo Beach, California.
Lives in New York and Los Angeles.
Francis Al˙s
*1959 in Antwerp.
Lives and works in Mexico City.
Heike Baranowsky
*1966 in Augsburg, Germany.
Monica Bonvicini
*1965 1965 in Venice.
Lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles.
Robert Boyd
*1969.
Lives in New York.
Anthony Burdin
Lives and works in California.
Jeff Burton
*1963 in Anaheim, California.
Lives and works in Los Angeles.
Lonnie van Brummelen
*1969.
Lives and works in Paris.
Paul Chan
*1973 in Hong Kong.
Lives and works in New York.
Thomas Demand
*1964 in Munich.
Lives in Berlin.
Olafur Eliasson
*1967 in Copenhagen.
Lives and work in Copenhagen and Berlin.
Dara Friedman
*1968 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany.
Lives in Miami.
Kate Gilmore
*1975 in Washington.
Lives in New York.
Douglas Gordon
*1966 in Glasgow.
Lives in Glasgow and New York.
Manuel Graf
*1978 in Bühl, Germany.
Lives in Düsseldorf.
Dan Graham
*1942 in Urbana, Illinois.
Lives in New York.
Jeppe Hein
*1974 in Copenhagen.
Lives in Copenhagen and Berlin.
Christian Jankowski
*1968 in Göttingen, Germany.
Lives in Berlin, Hamburg and New York.
Joan Jonas
*1936 in New York.
Lives in New York.
Mark Leckey
*1964 in London.
Klara Liden
*1979 in Stockholm.
Lives in Stockholm.
Gordon Matta-Clark
*1943 in New York, 1978 in New York.
Anthony McCall
*1946 St. Pauls Cray/ England.
Lives in New York.
Adam McEwen
*1965 in the UK.
Lives in New York.
Bruce Nauman
*1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Lives in Galisteo/New Mexico.
Tony Oursler
*1957 in New York.
Lives and works in New York.
Paul Pfeiffer
*1966 in Honululu, Hawaii.
Lives and works in New York.
Thiago Rocha Pitta
*1980 in Tiradentes, Brazil.
Pipilotti Rist
*1962 in Grabs, Switzerland.
Reynold Reynolds & Patrick Jolley
* in the US. Lives and works in New York and Berlin.
*1964 in Ireland. Lives and works in London.
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
*1967 in Giessen, Germany.
Lives and works in Berlin.
Taryn Simon
*1975 in New York.
Robert Smithson
*1938 in Passaic, New Jersey.
1973.
Mathilde ter Heijne
*1969 in Strasburg, the Netherlands.
Lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin.
Kon Trubkovich
*1979 in Moscow.
Lives in New York.
Bill Viola
*1951. Lives in California.
Clemens von Wedemeyer
*1974 in Göttingen, Germany.
Lives in Berlin and Leipzig.
Aaron Young
*1972 in San Francisco.