NOWs: Jungle Memory by Andreas Greiner

11 September - 31 October 2020 / Nows

Andreas Greiner, Jungle Memory 0001, 2019

Andreas Greiner: Jungle Memory

In Andreas Greiner’s work, there is no contradiction between art and science. His multi-media, multi-disciplinary practice includes time-based living and digital sculptures, photographs, and video works that chart complex concerns and expose vital issues in contemporary society, including environmental and ecological challenges. In the exhibition Jungle Memory, Greiner recreates nature, representing his research into endangered forests in Germany and Poland.

Greiner probes the relationship between ecology and technology. Amid a simulated forest and light scenario that transforms the main gallery space, Greiner presents a large-format video work made with the aid of artificial intelligence. A dataset comprising several thousand photographs that Greiner shot in the ancient Hambacher Forst and Białowieża forests was fed into a digital calculus to derive the idea of a forest. In processing the pictures, the artist created generated recollections or algorithmic projections of an abundant and unruly nature whose romantic flair is unmistakable. The resulting images are layered and morphed together to create a cinematic dance of trees, bright and illusionary yet concerning and oddly foreboding of a post-human world. A sound composition accompanies the installation.

Paralleling the abstractions on the four-square-meter LED screen and the sound piece, Greiner premieres a video in the first room. A two-channel video, created in collaboration with Paul Rohlfs, is presented on screens (purchased second-hand) that are connected to a central control box. In addition, the screens display archival quotes from texts on the economic or protective vision of silviculture, and a video illustrating the current process of natural dynamic reforestation. The video shows how the death of old spruce trees at the hands of the bark beetles allows the forest to regenerate, making it versatile and resilient. […]

The exhibition can be read as a cognitive and emotional collage that highlights, through a concrete local example, the interdependence of historical factors, economic decisions and climate change. Taking as a starting point the catastrophic situation of the forests of the Harz (a highland region in Lower Saxony), the works address an immediate reality that is tied as much to past centuries’ silviculture as to contemporary global ecological choices.

With Jungle Memory, Greiner probes the question whether, in our age of climate change and the mass extinction of species, the language of art is actually capable of adequately articulating these concerns. The passages above are excerpts from an essay that Bernard Vienat contributed for the gallery catalogue, which will be published in September 2020 and available at the gallery and via the online shop.

NOWs: Trauma by Felix Kiessling

12 September - 24 October 2020 / Nows ⟶

Traumasolo exhibition alexander levy Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse 26 10969 Berlin Soft opening 12 September 12–7 pm Accompanied by a text by Larissa Kikol The current hygiene regulations will be maintained for the entire duration of the exhibition. The gallery alexander levy is pleased to present new works by Felix Kiessling for this year’s Gallery Weekend Berlin (Sep 11 – Sep 13). The chaos has been a starting point for many of Felix Kiessling’s works over the past few years. In a playful way, he fathoms human perception and the question of how the world is connected. Hereby, physical parameters such as energy, tension and effect are decisive for him. Kiessling tries to explore and expand the limits of the possible. For the upcoming exhibition he is now going to examine the chaos within the social context of large cities. In the exhibition, individual work complexes are combined to form an overall spatial concept. When entering the gallery space, the observer becomes part of an abstract, chaotic urban playground. The entire floor will be covered with paving slabs, which are commonly known from our cityscape. Nevertheless, some of them are wobbling, which results in a feeling of insecurity. A new series of works deals with the bicycle as representation for the dealing with public space and property: the bicycle stands for mobility and independence, though through choice of model and color it also stands for individuality and differentiation. The bicycle that has been forgotten or left behind, rusted and broken on the street on the other hand, shows the divided relationship of an affluent society to its artifacts. Combined into abstract sculptures and covered with fresh paint, the old, deformed corpses are transformed into new objects that highlight the tense field between individuality and mass production. Two further current works unfold through the dialogue with the space. For the first work, Felix Kiessling transposes the material steel into a minimalist sculpture by bending a four-meter long plank and connecting its ends. The sculpture is thus exposed to permanent tension, always close to escalation. The chained sequence of action and reaction is therefore put to halt. The sculpture is in a moment of suspension, almost an uncanny calm. In another work, drywall profiles are braced against the gallery ceiling by a scaffolding spindle. The sculpture freezes for a moment from a deformation process and the individual elements merge into a collective unit. Felix Kiessling’s series is the result of extensive researches about the possibilities and weaknesses of industrially produced materials. They refer to a time, in which large cities are marked by construction projects and estate speculations and the societies of our globalized reality are confronted with social segregation and exclusion. Our environment is built from geometric and symmetrical construction materials. These materials will be the elements on which the forces of the exhibition will rub off, will cause them to totter and destroy their symmetry. The artist hereby raises the questions of who and to which extent actually shapes the city – the citizens or the economy, and looks at what our culturally constructed sense of stability consists of and considers moments in which our reality begins to crumble. Felix Kiessling, born in Hamburg in 1980, studied at the University of Arts Berlin. In 2014 he was a master student of Olafur Eliasson, at whose Institute for Space Experiments he studied from 2009 to 2014. Felix Kiessling’s works have been shown in national and international institutions and exhibitions, including Matucana100 (Santiago, Chile), MOCAK – Museum of Contemporary Art Krakow (Krakow, Poland), Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin), Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), Sprengel Museum (Hanover) and the 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (Moscow, Russia). alexander levy Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse 26 10969 Berlin Soft opening 12 September 12–7 pm Accompanied by a text by Larissa Kikol The current hygiene regulations will be maintained for the entire duration of the exhibition. The gallery alexander levy is pleased to present new works by Felix Kiessling for this year’s Gallery Weekend Berlin (Sep 11 – Sep 13). The chaos has been a starting point for many of Felix Kiessling’s works over the past few years. In a playful way, he fathoms human perception and the question of how the world is connected. Hereby, physical parameters such as energy, tension and effect are decisive for him. Kiessling tries to explore and expand the limits of the possible. For the upcoming exhibition he is now going to examine the chaos within the social context of large cities. In the exhibition, individual work complexes are combined to form an overall spatial concept. When entering the gallery space, the observer becomes part of an abstract, chaotic urban playground. The entire floor will be covered with paving slabs, which are commonly known from our cityscape. Nevertheless, some of them are wobbling, which results in a feeling of insecurity. A new series of works deals with the bicycle as representation for the dealing with public space and property: the bicycle stands for mobility and independence, though through choice of model and color it also stands for individuality and differentiation. The bicycle that has been forgotten or left behind, rusted and broken on the street on the other hand, shows the divided relationship of an affluent society to its artifacts. Combined into abstract sculptures and covered with fresh paint, the old, deformed corpses are transformed into new objects that highlight the tense field between individuality and mass production. Two further current works unfold through the dialogue with the space. For the first work, Felix Kiessling transposes the material steel into a minimalist sculpture by bending a four-meter long plank and connecting its ends. The sculpture is thus exposed to permanent tension, always close to escalation. The chained sequence of action and reaction is therefore put to halt. The sculpture is in a moment of suspension, almost an uncanny calm. In another work, drywall profiles are braced against the gallery ceiling by a scaffolding spindle. The sculpture freezes for a moment from a deformation process and the individual elements merge into a collective unit. Felix Kiessling’s series is the result of extensive researches about the possibilities and weaknesses of industrially produced materials. They refer to a time, in which large cities are marked by construction projects and estate speculations and the societies of our globalized reality are confronted with social segregation and exclusion. Our environment is built from geometric and symmetrical construction materials. These materials will be the elements on which the forces of the exhibition will rub off, will cause them to totter and destroy their symmetry. The artist hereby raises the questions of who and to which extent actually shapes the city – the citizens or the economy, and looks at what our culturally constructed sense of stability consists of and considers moments in which our reality begins to crumble. Felix Kiessling, born in Hamburg in 1980, studied at the University of Arts Berlin. In 2014 he was a master student of Olafur Eliasson, at whose Institute for Space Experiments he studied from 2009 to 2014. Felix Kiessling’s works have been shown in national and international institutions and exhibitions, including Matucana100 (Santiago, Chile), MOCAK – Museum of Contemporary Art Krakow (Krakow, Poland), Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin), Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), Sprengel Museum (Hanover) and the 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (Moscow, Russia).

NOWs: K60

09 - 20 September 2020 / Nows ⟶

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NOWs: Jungle Memory by Andreas Greiner

Andreas Greiner: Jungle Memory

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