International Paneling/July 2021
By Horster
Looking Beyond “Home”
Is there an International Network of Creatives?
By Leo Kuelbs
Baden-Baden
In our ongoing quest to reveal new contexts and commonalities in our rapidly digitizing world, we here at International Paneling turned towards those around us. In this issue, we feature several different interviews with inspirational creative folks from around the world. The reason this interests is that it demonstrates that creative types, no matter what their race, gender identity, age, religion, actually are part of a larger living network that spans the globe (and beyond..?).
I started realizing this years ago when I began to do some traveling. Back then, it was mostly in a pick-up truck around the Midwest, then down to Texas from Minnesota. Later on, the world began to open up because I understood that no matter where I went, there was a good chance of meeting other musicians, writers, artists with whom I could find common ground and possibly a couch to sleep on.
“ ...I understood that no matter where I went, there was a good chance of meeting other musicians, writers, artists with whom I could find common ground and possibly a couch to sleep on.”
More recently, I thought to dub the group the “creative class.” But upon research, I discovered the term had already been coined by a fellow named Richard Florida. The idea of a group of creatives that were bigger than the cities they inhabited was pretty much sympatico. The difference was Herr Florida was using his demographic group as a socio-economic device to help guide urban planning. And selling his findings to city planners all over the USA and likely beyond. It’s interesting stuff, but something about it seems to not strike the right chords, for me, anyway.
My version of this international creative network is less about city planning (using artists as fodder in the gentrification process) and more about people realizing they are not alone. No matter how weird you might feel in your current surroundings. There are others out there who have left home to find themselves and create new lives, new things. You could say that many have left home in order to find it. And maybe “home” isn’t a place at all, but instead a paradigm, a type of upbringing. This one goes out to those who didn’t necessarily stay where they were raised or stay who they were raised to be. Finding footing, creating context becoming themselves. Throughout this issue we will introduce you, via our 3 Questions mode, to a few folks who inspire, support and represent more open types of contact and content.
Say “Hello” to Summer 2021.
Shorty of the Month!
“The Cursed Spinner” by Eric Dunlap, as part of LIGHT YEAR 75:”Spirituality of Movement”
July 1st will bring us the latest installment of LIGHT YEAR. If you haven’t heard of LIGHT YEAR, it is a monthly short film and video art program that happens the first Thursday of each month on the Manhattan Bridge in NYC, as well as online via Facebook and also in Berlin, through SCOPE BLN in Moabit. “Spirituality of Movement” is the name of the LIGHT YEAR 75 and here is a video by Eric Dunlap, an USA guy in Germany now for many years. “The Cursed Spinner” is based upon an old German Fairy Tale and blends movement and technology to create something old and new in one go.
By JCO
A Graveside Tale of Stories Told
Cemetery Strolls
By JCO
Last winter, when lockdown was still fully going on, I went for a walk a few times with my friend, Dan. We usually met at the „Märchenbrunnen“ and walked through the entire Volkspark Friedrichshain. On one particular day, we were extra motivated, so we decided to expand our walk to the „Georgen-Parochial“ graveyard right across the street. It was pretty cold that day, but I guess our happiness over being outside socializing, made us forget our numb ear conches and hands. It was my first time visiting this cemetery in Berlin. I immediately felt that „Georgen-Parochial“ is a special one. When we passed an almost Roman temple-looking mausoleum, I couldn’t hide my excitement any longer. Dan realized that I was clearly in my element. And I was just grateful that my now visible passion for graveyards didn’t freak him out.
Who was the person passed that he was reading to?
How were they related?
On our walk, a very touching scene caught my attention: a man, probably in his late 70s, was sitting in front of one grave and reading a book out loud. He even brought his own folding chair and blankets. It seemed that he had been sitting there for a long time. I remember pointing him out to Dan, and we immediately started to fantasize about his backstory. Who was the person passed that he was reading to? How were they related? His determination to sit and read there in the cold, made it clear that he must have loved that person deeply. Was it his wife, sibling, kid or a friend? And what was he reading to the grave? Poems, stories or something self-written? Maybe he’s an author? Until today, I regret that at this very moment, I didn’t have the courage to speak to him. To find out his story.
He always finds his way back to my thoughts, so whenever I’m in the area, I check on the spot where I saw him last. Hopefully I will see him again one day and this story will be continued…
3 Questions with Malcolm Wong from Tokyo
Comics, Music, Videos, Weird Dolls and Glass Blowing via Maryland, Hawaii and Tokyo
Intro by Leo Kuelbs
Malcolm Wong is an innovator. Along with his wife and partner, Junko Wong, they built an empire out of design, which led to the Asian license for an abandoned American line of dolls, and fashion, accessories, videos and a tea shop for the same, plus music, comics, and even glass blowing.
The Questions:
1. How did you wind up in Tokyo? Short version!
2. Can you tell us the story of how you and your wife, Junko, got going with the Blythe dolls? Short version!
3. You are involved in so many projects. Can you tell us about them and what’s coming up?
Extra tasty links from Malcolm Wong: (The Comics) http://www.dogeaters-manga.com , (The Band) https://cloudhandsproject.bandcamp.com, (The Design/Illustration Project) https://www.cwctokyo.com, (The Dolls) https://www.blythedoll.com, (The Next Generation) https://dustin-clarence-hidetoshi-wong.bandcamp.com/album/internal-hot-spring
By ANANI
When did the Golden Rule Become Obsolete?
Or…10,000 Hours makes an Expert
Or…the remaking of Family
By Wolf Vest
“Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you” is the Golden Rule. Besides the Ten Commandments, it was the go-to thumbnail for guiding decisions. I say “was” because it seems that this reasonable sounding axiom is now obsolete. Or has it somehow devolved to fit a digital world that relies not on face-to-face communication, but on a digital echo chamber and the media outlets that pump up, play with and exploit confirmation bias?
I recently had a phone call with a friend in the USA. He is a Trump supporter, but basically a reasonable guy. At a certain point of exhausting barrage dodging by me, he simply said, “If you can’t see reality, then there’s no point in talking to you.” He meant talking to me, at all. Period.
Where once people were influenced by family and friends over dinner, out socializing, playing sports, holidays, etc. now we have instant, all of the time access to opinions and perspectives which best fit our own notions of who we are and want to be. And they are provided not only by like-minded individuals, but also exaggerated by whomever can shape what is most easily accessible while casually perusing online or checking our in boxes.
How many hours does one spend online per day? During the virus, my computer told me I spent about 7 hours a day online. But that didn’t count when I am online watching Amazon on the smart TV in the other room. Basically, about 75% of my waking hours were spent online. Let’s see, 75% of 16 waking hours is 12 hours per day. They say that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. So, if you multiply 12 hours x 834, it takes a little over 2 ¼ years of daily exposure to your content of choice before you become an expert! “Do your own research,” they say. It should go on, “…in order to become the expert you want to become!” It appears there is no more empirical reality. Anyone is an expert at whatever they want and should not be challenged. The “Victim/Hero,” well portrayed by our last president, has become a template for many, especially middle aged and older white guys. I think the influence of too many “Lethal Weapon” type movies has finally flowered.
That isn’t to say that the problem of extreme views is only on one side. Trying to watch bits of CNN, etc. is a pretty hard pill to swallow, as well. The head shaking, high-mindedness that I often associate with old school “Secular Humanism” is all over the place. And while I definitely dig some of the tenants of Humanism, I have never been a fan of those who really push it. Somehow, they always got lost in their own exceptionalism and narcissism and can wind up just as bad as their counterparts.
I have been told I am a “Lib,” so many times, I want to puke. The two-party system is like watching wrestling in the 70s, to me. It’s all the same. Pick your side. It is entertainment.
Which brings us to another big issue: the need to define and label the person you are talking to. I have been told I am a “Lib,” so many times, I want to puke. The two-party system is like watching wrestling in the 70s, to me. It’s all the same. Pick your side. It is entertainment. The real battle, as always, is rich vs. the poor. Divide and conquer is still the name of the game and, besides the extreme media options, the internet has offered us many opportunities to pry society apart into self-confirming quarters. “Us against them” has become a narcotic which is sold online, and a huge part of the world is addicted to it. Ask yourself, who sells this? Who benefits from such stuff?
Back in NYC, in the early 2000s, I was out at a bar with friends, just talking to people, doing what you do in NYC. I met a random gal and we started chatting. We were blathering and finally got to “what do you do” type questions and she told me that she was in marketing and worked for a firm hired by a republican think tank. When I asked what they were up to, she said, “It’s as bad as you think it is. It’s actually much, much worse.” She went on to tell me that she was an Ivy League graduate who studied psychology. Top of the class. This marketing gig paid great and was not an easy job to get. I totally forgot about that encounter, as we never met again, until recently and remembering the look on her face when she said, “It’s as bad as you think it is…” definitely gave me the chills. She told me that the fruits of her labors would be visible within the foreseeable future.
Perhaps after 10,000 or more hours in the echo chamber doing your own “research,” we have finally arrived at a place where “Do unto others…” still exists—except the others now are only other versions of “us” who have also doubled down on irrational statements, making these ideas which were once crazy, now accepted reality to a certain set. Anyone who disagrees should be avoided and is, in fact, an enemy. Whether they are blood family, or not, what binds us now is a commitment to a type of individualism that is actually a version of manipulated group think, with an “individualism” patch on top of it. It’s a group of addicts or narcissists that echo each other’s need for connection and reaffirmation of who they think they are/who they are told they should be. Go into Q Anon land and it gets worse. The scary part is that the recent doubling down (election results/January 6th) that is necessary to continue to be a part of the group seems to have taken hold. And the once reasonable fringe of the right has become more extreme and intolerant of alternative views. If anyone didn’t do “the research” and reach the same conclusion, they are not saved, they are doomed. They will not be part of the new order, which weirdly echoes resurrection myths of old, in that the non-believers are cast out.
So, away we go into a world of self-styled internet/research driven “experts” who need reinforcement of their hero/victim/saved status at the expense of any of the lost souls who disagree. From both sides. All the while, the experts are missing the point that when people can be moved in giant blocks, they can more easily moved. And that is now what is considered individualism? You know, the more I think about it, all those zombie movies and TV shows are starting to look a lot more plausible.
3 Questions with Patrice D. Bowman from NYC
Making Films, Making a Difference
Intro by Leo Kuelbs
While working on the LIGHT YEAR project, we came across the work of fellow New Yorker, Patrice D. Bowman, whose award winning short film, “Saturday Grace” will be projected onto the Manhattan Bridge (online and in Berlin, too) on July 1st, as part of the “Spirituality of Movement” program. It is an excellently executed piece with loads of heart, and watching it feels like medicine during these times of difficult transition and growth.
The Questions:
1. Patrice, can you tell us a little bit about your work and your artistic background?
2. Your short film, “Saturday Grace,” features a lot of movement and music. It is really great. What’s the story behind it and also, didn’t that piece win some awards?
3. What’s in the works and what shows are coming up for you?
A Walk through Kreuzberg Galleries, Thursday, May 27, 2021
Have Berlin galleries colluded towards an aesthetic of second childhoods towards a recovery from winter and the virus? In this reportage, Sean Smuda gives it a shot.
By Sean Smuda
Berlin
In Berlin, the winter of hard lockdowns has gradually thawed, and its real and existentialist crises push towards rebirth. At the Corona anti-gen testing center (required one last time to enter non-essential retail establishments, i.e. galleries) one of the station’s nose-swabbers talked about the democracy of the weather. He said it was a good thing that everyone couldn’t order it to their liking or there would be a chaos of climate zones. Yet isn’t that what we have? On-demand conveniences create systemic imbalance for utopic possibilities, and the separation between the individual and the group seems greater than ever. Or does it? The tensions between humanity and force majeur are borne out by six Kreuzberg galleries, which address the new social space of birth and childhood. As the garden of earthly delights that is Berlin in summer withers in its club-less drought, the fantasizing of innocence takes new paths.
Barbara Weiss Gallery: The Raid. Jannis Marwitz’s illustrational and traditionally wrought paintings of panicked geese, anthropomorphic trees, and veggies are torturously anxious. These fairy tale creatures, some with faces in stomachs, have a Mother Goose in WW2 vibe that is puzzlingly retro until one thinks of comfort. Nostalgia bordering on the kitsch as a will to the conditions of childhood as seen from the adult’s POV –sweet, cozy, and mutant, Age itself is, perhaps, the raid.
Next door at Kraupa-Tuskany Ziedler, Anna Uddenberg’s Big Baby consisted of rapid prototype/CNC wall sculptures. The life-preserver sized teething rings related to the cult film “Baby” (1973). In it, a man is raised and kept like a child and his family's life revolves around his care and disability payments. A subplot of the unemployment/eternal youth/ club culture of Berlin? Their monochrome wood grain and fragmented representation was as curious as game trophies without skulls or horns. Stations of the crib without a cross.
Agnes Scherer’s My refuge, my treasure, without body, without measure, at Chert Lüdde was heavy on mythic and psychoanalytic references, with key holes in bent-backed ceramic figures and paintings. Miniature beings on scales of justice held by angels. Their faux-folk-naive illustrational style was perfect for the analyst’s need art to trigger patients’ exploration of childhood trauma, and gauge the weight of a soul in Bitcoin.
Installation shot from Agnes Scherer, “My refuge, my treasure, without body, without measure” at Chert Luedde Gallery, 30th April – 26th June, 2021. Pic by Sean Smuda
Through a rain shower to Klemm’s where Geumhyung Jeong’s Under Construction splayed a workshop-like collection of tables, parts, and videos of motors, wheels, batteries, and faces. The process-oriented layout crossed robotics and go-carts for youthful extensions of mash-up bodies. Appealing Lego-like, dis-appealingly human-centipede-like.
At Soy Capitain, Proudfoot & Piasecka’s Ensemble was a similar deconstruction of the body and mechanics. A huge clap of thunder echoed in the sky on entering, and I remarked to the gallerist “Frankenstein is in the house”. A bluetooth speaker breathed life into an accordioned paper form suspended from a partial, polyurethane face that was also a clothes hanger. The room constituted an exploded person, a dress/body form spun slowly on eccentric orbits. Distended by its dependence on machines, it waited for the viewer or perhaps the ghost of the drowned girl from the Karloff film, to put it together.
Across the street, the medical, vulnerable aesthetic continued with a Corona test station where a line of well-dressed swabbers stood by like gallery attendants. Indeed, many galleries have supplemented their income by converting into test stations. However, like most galleries they have been non-responsive to exhibiting beyond viral or pre-existing conditions.
At DAAD, Matana Roberts (aka Moor Mother)’s show, We Hold These Truths, brought a trauma less medical. As a musician and storyteller, she warmly and engagingly brings life full circle, but Berlin and the times have given her a colder, fragmented edge. Video projections of #BLM and George Floyd Uprising footage were edited with superimposed broken pavement and plants growing through. WHTT echoed Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, The Message is Death (2016), but without its broader dramaturgy of signs and juxtapositions. As always, however, her tonal explorations were meditative, urgent, and challenging. Listen to Moor Mother’s album Coin Coin, NOW.
With rent rises, condo-ization, and the virus, capitols around the globe have become more closed, and professionalized from their glory days. DJ’s look back on Sodom and Gomorrah and the turntable has turned to stone as baby buggies fill the streets under this democratic weather.
The last of this gallery juggernaut of 6 before 6 (closing time) was Loie Hollowell’s Sacred Contract at König, a suite of sculptural paintings related to birthing. Graphically and hue-wise, they read between a subtler Vasarely and a painterly take on Michael Heizer’s earth works. Hollowell’s body-sized belly forms were just right to take one out-of-body by going through it. Their design of stacked twin circles with ravine-like passages between them recalled the Tarot card of the Universe –the world dreaming of the world, a shimmeringly apt mother-child archetype.
The political relevance of Matana Robert’s rebirthing plants included, the new-life themes of Kreuzberg’s galleries seemed a coordinated effort. One may ponder the intentionality of this or agree that it has indeed been a winter longer and greyer than any before, and that spring is finally here. Aside from gallerists and artists processing this, many Berliners are chomping at the bit to get babysitters and go clubbing for three days straight to ring in the change, though this may yet be a ways off.
Perhaps Prenzlauerberg’s Die Ganze Freiheit gallery had the final word on this with its group show “Intimacy”. In Markus Wüste’s sculpture Plattenspieler (2003), a sculpted granite turntable inset in a huge slab of same, rotates at 78 LP speed and plays the sound of its own decay. This leaves one to wonder how long before the diamond needle gives up the ghost and how many years before it cuts through the platter. With rent rises, condo-ization, and the virus, capitols around the globe have become more closed, and professionalized from their glory days. DJ’s look back on Sodom and Gomorrah and the turntable has turned to stone as baby buggies fill the streets under this democratic weather.
3 Questions with Boris Kostadinov and Maya Miteva from SCOPE BLN
Bulgarian Business Buddies Creating Spaces in Different Places for Light Art, Technology and More…
Intro by Leo Kuelbs
SCOPE BLN opened in the Summer of 2020 in Berlin’s Moabit neighborhood after several years of development. Featuring spaces for living, as well as the development and presentation of mainly concptual and light-based projects, the venture has already expanded to include a cafe and another space across town, which fosters creative technological thinking often veering into areas formerly thought of as more classically arty. They are also a part of the monthly LIGHT YEAR program, which also takes place in NYC and online.
Boris is a very well known and respected curator, specializing in video art. Maya comes from a unique creative entreprenureal realm. Both are into building bridges across cultures and are especially sensitive to more Eastern parts of Europe and creative voices that are oftentimes lost in the larger conversation, especially when it comes to the development new talent and perspectives. Right now, they are coming from Berlin via Vienna, Sofia, Plovdiv and other places.
The Questions:
1. SCOPE BLN is a real international venture. Can you tell us about the concept and how you came up with it?
2. Does SCOPE plan to reach other cities? If so, where?
3. What are some upcoming projects you are excited about (later in the year, after July)?
Subtlety and Cunning Humor vs. Oppression and Speechlessness:
The exhibition León Ferrari - “Reproducing Them Infinitely” in Berlin
By Jana M. Noritsch
Berlin
It is much more than a retrospective as we know it from museums and galleries: From July 30th to September 25th, 2021, a cooperation is realized in the gallery neurotitan (Schwarzenberg e.V.) http://www.neurotitan.de/Leon_Ferrari_main_DE.html with the Fundación Augusto y León Ferrari - Arte y Acervo (FALFFAA) http://fundacionferrari.org, which brings León Ferrari's works to life through the participation of the visitors. Like an open studio and living archive, the exhibition space activates Ferrari's studio for the first time in a non-museum, non-commercial context. The title of the exhibition gives us an indication of the invitation from the curators, and I want to inspire you to discover it.
León Ferrari today is considered as one of the most important artists of Latin America of the twentieth century. The works of the Argentine conceptual artist are collected and exhibited worldwide by renowned museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) NYC, the Casa de las Americas in Havana, the Daros Latinamerica Collection in Zurich and the Center Pompidou in Paris.
León Ferrari today is considered as one of the most important artists of Latin America of the twentieth century. The works of the Argentine conceptual artist are collected and exhibited worldwide by renowned museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) NYC, the Casa de las Americas in Havana, the Daros Latinamerica Collection in Zurich and the Center Pompidou in Paris.
Berlin: In the exhibition of the neurotitan gallery, key works by the Argentine conceptual artist are presented alongside lesser-known works that have not yet been shown in Germany. The focus of the curators of the exhibition, Annika Hirsekorn & Paloma Gabriela Zamorano Ferrari (granddaughter of León Ferrari), is primarily on the political text-image compositions and the medium of print in the artist's oeuvre: works of art from the work cycles Braille, Heliografías, Nunca Más (Never Again) and Homens (Hombres) will fan out the art of León Ferrari taking into account the work “Carta a un general” (Letter to a General, 1963), selected Electronicartes, a sound installation as well as contemporary documents, small objects and multimedia elements.
León Ferrari in his studio in São Paulo, around 1980 © Fundación Augusto y León Ferrari – Arte y Acervo
Art, politics and life are closely interwoven at León Ferrari (1920-2013)
An engineer by profession, he experimented with the structures and modes of action of various materials such as ceramics and printing techniques, plaster and cement, wood and wire, pigments and inks, and developed his works from them. Collage or picture montage is also a continuous technique in Ferrari's oeuvre, because it enabled him to think in pictures. In doing so, the artist sometimes bridges the gap between the propaganda in the media and his lack of understanding of the dictatorial exercise of power in Argentina. León Ferrari has always found ways to visualize his speechlessness. That is why his work is still so important today.
In the 1960s, Ferrari was a key figure in the politicization of the avant-garde artist: alongside Juan Pablo Renzi, Pablo Súarez, Roberto Jacoby, Luis Felipe Noé and Jorge de la Vega, he belonged to the circle of the Instituto Di Tella https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instituto_Di_Tella (until it was closed from the Argentine Military government under Juan Carlos Onganía after a bitter struggle in 1970). This neo-avant-garde movement in Argentina in the 1960s and 1970s directly interwoven political messages with its conceptual art practice and continues to have an impact today. León Ferrari became known for his vehemently power-critical image strategies, which ceaselessly addressed the ruling power structures of the church and the dictatorship in Argentina. Ferrari's assemblage “La civilización occidental y cristiana” (The Western Christian Civilization) from 1965 is probably the best known, which was created in response to the Vietnam War and depicts Christ crucified on a US bomber. The work was shown in 2007 at the Biennale di Venezia (Golden Lion award for his life's work Link https://universes.art/en/magazine/articles/2013/leon-ferrari-in-memoriam/03) and in 2020 again caused protests at the Madrid National Museum of Modern Art, Reina Sofía.
After the military took control in Argentina, Ferrari lived in exile in São Paulo (Brazil) from 1976 to 1991. There he realized large-format sculptures, but most importantly he developed the serialization of works with engravings, photocopies and heliographies. His struggles with forms of political and religious power spurred him on and repeatedly led him to personal commitment, in particular to the defense of human rights. Art as politics – for Ferrari it was no different, as can be seen in his 1968 essay “Art of meanings” (“Arte de los significados”).
León Ferrari © Fundación Augusto y León Ferrari – Arte y Acervo
The theme: "Forced Disappearance" and the work cycle NUNCA MÁS (Never Again)
One block of topics in the exhibition is particularly important to me: I don't know what it is like in your society, but in Germany the topic of forced disappearance is a human rights crime that has so far been inadequately treated.
Many countries are affected. In Argentina, during the Argentine military dictatorship (1976-1983), there was massive violent disappearance among the civilian population. One of the victims was León Ferrari's son.
One of the work cycles shown in the exhibition and illustrating the political self-image of León Ferrari's art are the collaged works that Ferrari produced for the Nunca Más report in 1995. The report documents the human rights crimes of the military dictatorship on over 50,000 pages. It was published in 1984 under the title “Nunca Más” (Never Again). In 1996 it was reprinted in thirty weekly editions by the newspapers Página / 12 and Eudeba Publishers.
In the exhibition in Berlin on August 30th, in the context of the works of León Ferrari, the International Day of Forced Disappearance will be discussed in a public event of the gallery neurotitan and the (re-) produced prints of the visitors from the workshops on the 28th and 29th August 2021.
Encrypted language against speechlessness: CARTA A UN GENERAL
In 1963 León Ferrari made a calligraphy that cannot be deciphered: “Carta a un General”. He finds no words, but a (new) language. His speechlessness in relation to the ruling power structures is to be understood in this way as an expression of disobedience and resistance to a military authority and its oppression. That is the way of art. And that's why the curators of the exhibition have based their conception on this.
León Ferrari © Fundación Augusto y León Ferrari – Arte y Acervo
Being able to read art even though you can't see it: BRAILLE
Inspired by the blind writer Jorge Luis Borges, León Ferrari added the element of Braille to his collage technique from 1997 onwards. At first he stamps quotes from poems about nude photographs, but later uses the technique explicitly for political purposes to present his views on religious images, UN publications or news items.
Selected works from this series will be reproduced for the exhibition and shown. The Braille-reproductions allows blind and visually impaired visitors to touch and read the works.
León Ferrari © Fundación Augusto y León Ferrari – Arte y Acervo
Ferrari's sound installation: ESCULTURAS SONORAS
Ferrari created its first sound sculptures in the 1980s. The sculpture reproduced for the exhibition is accessible and was selected as a further interactive object to enable access to the art of León Ferrari for visually impaired or blind visitors.
León Ferrari © Fundación Augusto y León Ferrari – Arte y Acervo
THE ARCHITECTURE OF MADNESS: HELIOGRAFÍAS (1980-1986)
After Ferrari and his family were forced into exile in Brazil in 1976, León Ferrari began a series of drawings here, which he reproduced using the printing technique of heliography (known from the reproduction of architectural plans) and sent to friends (Mail Art).
Whether drawn in ink, stamped or collaged, these drawings are reminiscent of city maps. Later he combined letra set symbols, chaotic patterns of walls, people, furniture and cars that, on closer inspection, stage paradoxical situations. For example, people who line up to enter empty rooms or are locked in small cubicles. The labyrinth worlds became known under the series title “The Architecture of Madness” and reflect the madness of the big city, the metropolis of São Paulo on the one hand, but also the violence in the Argentine cities that Ferrari had experienced. In these pictures, the seemingly humorous symbols interweave with the feelings of confinement, suffocation and oppression in those years.
The bridge to today:
The works shown in the exhibition convert technical drawings (we remember the engineer León Ferrari.) into a narrative that can be read as a metaphor for contemporary cities. Individuals wander here with no discernible logic in an almost infinite repetition of paradoxical arrangements in which they seem trapped. Of course, I also have to think directly of Foucault's heterotopias ... In addition, the impression of alienation and uniformity in the big cities, and the question of how this labyrinth can be broken, form an initial basis for the communication program that starts with a mapping workshop on this work cycle.
In the HOMENS folder, León Ferrari takes up the motif of the labyrinth from “The Architecture of Madness”, with the human being the central figure of the patterns and arrangements. The patterns appear harmonious and organic at first glance, the recurring letra set motifs of a human figure combined with plants, animals, etc. also evoke a feeling of alienation in these works.
León Ferrari © Fundación Augusto y León Ferrari – Arte y Acervo
To question the hierarchy between original and copy by León Ferrari
As one of his strategies to denounce artistic and political censorship and lack of freedom and to oppose it, Ferrari intends to reproduce his work. The exhibition title “Reproducing Them Infinitely” refers to this and invites every visitor - including people with disabilities - to interact and reproduce: “The concrete interconnection of Ferrari's artistic practice and criticism of power form the central theme of the exhibition. In an exhibition program that invites visitors on the weekends to reproduce the artist's work themselves using printing techniques, the exhibition theme can be experienced directly and in an inclusive way. The Homens series is particularly suitable for reproduction using the screen printing ttechnique. Visitors have the opportunity to reprint patterns from the Homens series at barrier-free printing tables.” (Annika Hirsekorn, curator)
The project partners:
Between the cooperation partners FALFFAA (Fundación Augusto y León Ferrari Arte y Acervo) and Galerie neurotitan (Schwarzenberg e.V.) there has been an exchange lasting several years. The background to this is the decision of FALFFAA and its co-founder and curator of the exhibition, Paloma Gabriela Zamorano Ferrari (granddaughter León Ferraris), to preserve the artistic legacy of Ferrari and its political commitment to human rights violations by initiating direct actions.
In addition to the conventional management of the artistic legacy (cooperation with collections, museums and galleries), FALFAA and the curator's aim is to show, use and reproduce Ferrari's art in the context of socio-political educational and campaigning work. Thus, a living archive of Ferrari's pictorial cosmos is constantly evolving. In this context, far-reaching political campaigns with Amnesty International and refugee associations have already been developed.
The neurotitan gallery, which is an integral and important part of Berlin's independent scene, acts as an exhibition partner at the interface between established art space and space for experimentation and subculture.
For everyone who cannot see the exhibition, I recommend this little glimpse from Cecilia de Torres Ltd: "MEET THE ARTIST" Video León Ferrari from 2020 (English).
Poetry Corner
by Holly Day
Minneapolis
I Gave You
I expel my complaints in clouds of black ink
determine to blind with my helpless anger. The ink
floats around me in a cloud, obscures the view
of the sink full of dishes, the bills stacked on the table
toys that refuse to move from where they were dropped
messy handprints on everything. I long
to escape through the drain, through the tiny cracks in the floor tile,
slither behind the stove where the mice make noise
find freedom in the dark parts of the yard
beneath the floorboards of the basement.
The First Day
The robot places the cactus in the middle of the room, spreads sand
around its base, carves flowers for its crown out of an old tin can.
Later, it will dig labyrinths for groundhogs, trapdoor burrows for spiders
spread shimmering handfuls of nuts and bolts to draw down the vultures
the occasional migrating crow.
The robot connects all these dreams to a base of clockwork gears
soldered wire and lacquered diodes, rolls up carefully-plotted blueprints
to file with the government; the job is done. It closes the door just in time
to miss the sun creaking up against one wall for the first time
leaving a streak of yellow paint in its wake.
Thank you for Reading International Paneling. Next issue scheduled for July 25th!