Lisa Jo, KAYA (Kerstin Brätsch & Debo Eilers), Lukas Quietzsch, Pádraig Timoney @ The Downer. Opening 16 May 2021

Posted in Exhibitions on May 14th, 2021
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Lisa Jo, KAYA (Kerstin Brätsch & Debo Eilers), Lukas Quietzsch, Pádraig Timoney

Opening Sunday 16 May 2021, 3-7pm

at The Downer – Skalitzer Straße 68, 10997 Berlin

The exhibition will be on view from 16 May until 26 June 2021

INGO GERKEN – O F F E N E S B U C H @ Motto Berlin. 22.10 – 21.11.2020.

Posted in Exhibitions on November 14th, 2020
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Vitrine installation at Motto Books courtyard & passage

4 photographs

left to right:
– Hello World – Revision einer Sammlung, Nationalgalerie Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Hrsg. Udo Kittelmann & Gabriele Knapstein, Hirmer Verlag, München 2018
– Hubert Kiecol, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 1991
– 100 Jahre Rupprecht Geiger, Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Hrsg. Fritz Jacobi und Melanie Wilken, Berlin 2008

– Andreas Gursky – Werke/Works 80-08, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Haus Lange und Haus Esters, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2008

Vitrine installation at Motto Books courtyard & passage

Vitrine installation at Motto Books courtyard & passage

Vitrine installation at Motto Books courtyard & passage

BIBLIOSCULPTURE 101
2020
black shelf, adhesive tape, book
(Michaela Meise – Ding und Körper, Badischer Kunstverein, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln 2012)

BIBLIOSCULPTURE 102
2020
ripped out book page, book
(Sexy and Cool – Minimal goes Emotional, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld 2017)

BIBLIOSCULPTURE 102 / Detail
2020
ripped out book page, book
(Sexy and Cool – Minimal goes Emotional, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld 2017)

BIBLIOSCULPTURE 102 / Detail
2020
ripped out book page, book
(Sexy and Cool – Minimal goes Emotional, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld 2017)

BIBLIOSCULPTURE 103
2020
sucker plug, chain, glass, book
(Wolfgang Tillmans – Abstract Pictures, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2015)

BIBLIOSCULPTURE 103 / Detail
2020
sucker plug, chain, glass, book
(Wolfgang Tillmans – Abstract Pictures, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2015)

BIBLIOSCULPTURE 104
2020
stapler, staples, magnets, book
(Candida Höfer / Rui Xavier – Silent Spaces, Hrsg. Uta Grosenick u. Herbert Burkert, Distanz Verlag, Berlin 2015)

BIBLIOSCULPTURE 104 / Detail
2020
stapler, staples, magnets, book
(Candida Höfer / Rui Xavier – Silent Spaces, Hrsg. Uta Grosenick u. Herbert Burkert, Distanz Verlag, Berlin 2015)

BIBLIOSCULPTURE 105 
2020
clockwork, golden pendulum, book
(Germaine Kruip – Works 1999-2017, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Koenig Books, London 2018)

BIBLIOSCULPTURE 105 
2020
clockwork, golden pendulum, book
(Germaine Kruip – Works 1999-2017, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Koenig Books, London 2018)

‘Nu Qui Marche’. Julien Carreyn. Motto Berlin 09.09-19.10.2020

Posted in Exhibitions on September 12th, 2020
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Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff @ The Downer. Opening June 18, 2020

Posted in Events on June 15th, 2020
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“Reality Companions” @ Motto Berlin

Posted in Events, Exhibitions on April 14th, 2020
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Bertrand Flanet: Pale Habits, 2017, installation view, Reality Companions, Motto Berlin

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Gina Folly: Don’t worry about your Future, 2020, installation view, Reality Companions, Motto Berlin

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Becket MWN: Seven-Oh-Six, 2015, installation view, Reality Companions, Motto Berlin

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Inga Danysz & Becket MWN: +4915215142816, 2020, installation view, Reality Companions, Motto Berlin

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Inga Danysz: The End is always at the Beginning, 2019, installation view, Reality Companions, Motto Berlin

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Inga Danysz: Untitled, 2019, installation view, Reality Companions, Motto Berlin

Photos: Yudith Heinemann

 

Reality Companions
Feb 21 – April 30, 2020
Motto Books Berlin

with works by Inga Danysz, Bertrand Flanet, Gina Folly, Becket MWN

curated by Dennis Brzek

In 2002, German car manufacturer VW opened their so called “Gläserne Manufaktur” (meaning both glassy and transparent factory) as a simulacrum for granting an undisturbed view into its production processes. The glass factory’s promise of full transparency is enmeshed in an array of showcases devoid of human activity, in which tasks are performed for an audience solely by an interplay of automatic gestures. Leading the viewer’s eye from the assembly of individual parts towards the wholeness of the finished product, their performance is—next to government apologias of stability, craft, and expertise—a testament to its belief in a scratch-free experience by way of steering the mechanical arms in safe distance from the glass surface. The luminous airspace lying in between the machinic extremities and their transparent cube is a border of the mind being kept firmly monosemantic.

Fast forward a few years and we are at Elon Musk’s presentation for the Cybertruck, a bulky desert buggy clad in a retro-futuristic shell including dramatically blacked out windows made from the company’s certified armor glass. This product showcase is made out to become the prime denominator for innovation, all the while being drenched in an upside-down baroque aesthetic of all things black and shiny. About half way into the spectacle, lead designer-cum-stage assistant Franz von Holzhausen hurls a metal ball into the truck’s hushed glass outlooks for demonstration of their promised permanence in the face of force. The ball hits and makes the glass crack. A dull thud serenades this banal action, framed underneath bright spotlights and the audience’s chuckled gasps and awkward laughters. In the moment of collision, the ball created a suspended drawing mapping its own meteoritic field of impact located somewhere within the thick outer sheet of the transparent metal. The lines of destruction that were drawn by the unfortunate performer create a spiderweb that becomes a gothic prop in this story’s haunted narrative. The signature left by the metal ball is both concrete and abstract, sketching a caricature of the visual organization of our present where what cracks is never the glass but only its very before. Famously, the only things that ever hits the view of those hyper valued subjects hidden behind bulletproof glass are the raw eggs thrown by protestors trying to make a pointed take, mostly in vain.

SUPERBEE SPIX COLA 139 KOOL GUY CRAZY CROSS 136 DUKE SPRIT SUPERKOOL KOOLKILLER ACE VIPERE SPIDER EDDIE KOLA are only some of the protagonists mentioned in Jean Baudrillard’s vision of New York of the 1970s in his essay “Kool killer ou l’insurrection par les signes” published in 1976. Here, the neurotically semiotic French philosopher describes the city as a vessel for signs and graffiti, abundant signifiers and empty words. The plane of production of these symbols is not just walls of buildings and underground stations but also the more irreducible surface of windows. Today, these scratchings seem to hover in between layers of glass, making them appear suspended in time and place like intractable and incomprehensible signs of another age. Workers who will travel to Grünheide in Brandenburg via S-Bahn for their shifts at Tesla’s Gigafactory 4 will see those engravings and believe them to be hieroglyphs of a time in which semantics were something created instead of endured.

Reality Companions. Motto Berlin. 20.02.2020

Posted in Events on February 12th, 2020
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Reality Companions

Reality Companions
opening: Feb 20, 7-10pm
Feb 21 – Mar 17, 2020
Motto Books Berlin

with works by
Inga Danysz
Bertrand Flanet
Gina Folly
Becket MWN

curated by Dennis Brzek

In 2002, German car manufacturer VW opened their so called “Gläserne Manufaktur” (meaning both glassy and transparent factory) as a simulacrum for granting an undisturbed view into its production processes. The glass factory’s promise of full transparency is enmeshed in an array of showcases devoid of human activity, in which tasks are performed for an audience solely by an interplay of automatic gestures. Leading the viewer’s eye from the assembly of individual parts towards the wholeness of the finished product, their performance is—next to government apologias of stability, craft, and expertise—a testament to its belief in a scratch-free experience by way of steering the mechanical arms in safe distance from the glass surface. The luminous airspace lying in between the machinic extremities and their transparent cube is a border of the mind being kept firmly monosemantic.
Fast forward a few years and we are at Elon Musk’s presentation for the Cybertruck, a bulky desert buggy clad in a retro-futuristic shell including dramatically blacked out windows made from the company’s certified armor glass. This product showcase is made out to become the prime denominator for innovation, all the while being drenched in an upside-down baroque aesthetic of all things black and shiny. About half way into the spectacle, lead designer-cum-stage assistant Franz von Holzhausen hurls a metal ball into the truck’s hushed glass outlooks for demonstration of their promised permanence in the face of force. The ball hits and makes the glass crack. A dull thud serenades this banal action, framed underneath bright spotlights and the audience’s chuckled gasps and awkward laughters. In the moment of collision, the ball created a suspended drawing mapping its own meteoritic field of impact located somewhere within the thick outer sheet of the transparent metal. The lines of destruction that were drawn by the unfortunate performer create a spiderweb that becomes a gothic prop in this story’s haunted narrative. The signature left by the metal ball is both concrete and abstract, sketching a caricature of the visual organization of our present where what cracks is never the glass but only its very before. Famously, the only things that ever hits the view of those hyper valued subjects hidden behind bulletproof glass are the raw eggs thrown by protestors trying to make a pointed take, mostly in vain.
SUPERBEE SPIX COLA 139 KOOL GUY CRAZY CROSS 136 DUKE SPRIT SUPERKOOL KOOLKILLER ACE VIPERE SPIDER EDDIE KOLA are only some of the protagonists mentioned in Jean Baudrillard’s vision of New York of the 1970s in his essay “Kool killer ou l’insurrection par les signes” published in 1976. Here, the neurotically semiotic French philosopher describes the city as a vessel for signs and graffiti, abundant signifiers and empty words. The plane of production of these symbols is not just walls of buildings and underground stations but also the more irreducible surface of windows. Today, these scratchings seem to hover in between layers of glass, making them appear suspended in time and place like intractable and incomprehensible signs of another age. Workers who will travel to Grünheide in Brandenburg via S-Bahn for their shifts at Tesla’s Gigafactory 4 will see those engravings and belief them to be hieroglyphs of a time in which semantics were something created instead of endured.

The Calabash Show. Nos:books. Shen Shen Books. Waterfall. Motto Berlin

Posted in Exhibitions, Motto Berlin event, Motto Berlin store on August 4th, 2015
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Two independent publishers from Taiwan, Shen Shen Books and nos:books, have arrived in Berlin to showcase their exceptional works and publications at “The Calabash Show”, to take place at Motto Berlin from July 31 to August 30.

At The Calabash Show, the two publishers come to Berlin together with several of their artists. The show takes inspiration from an ancient mythical story about people entering the calabash for one day for spiritual practice. They left the calabash after many ordeals, without achieving immortality. When returned to the real world, one year had passed. At Motto Berlin,  the two mortal publishers and their artists present their latest works and publications, and share their thoughts behind the many ordeals of art and publishing.

Participating artists include Chihoi, Eva Lin, Ling Yu Tai, Pei Yu Shen, Son Ni and Ting Cheng.

The show is supported by the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan, and The Arts Development Fund of the Home Affairs Bureau, the Government of Hong Kong SAR.

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Villa, How to Use. Leonor Antunes. BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE

Posted in Uncategorized on May 8th, 2014
Tags: ,

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Villa, How to Use

With essays by Maria Berman, Nuria Enguita Mayo, Ricardo Nicolau, Dieter Roelstraete, Doris von Drathen English Designed by Purtill Family Business 207 × 254 mm, 128 pages, 55 color and 8 b/w, illustrations, softcover
The first monograph to be published on the work of Leonor Antunes, villa, how to use is released in association with the exhibition Antunes conceived for the Serralves Villa in 2011. The result of a close collaboration between the artist and graphic designer Conny Purtill, this fully-illustrated publication includes installation views of Antunes’ exhibition (which featured works produced by the artist over the past decade alongside pieces specifically created for the Villa spaces), as well as five essays that offer an in-depth survey on Antunes’ art.

Dieter Roelstraete highlights the speculative concerns that, under the blanket term architecture, Antunes shares with the three most important German-speaking philosophers of the twentieth century (Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Adorno): identity and belonging, homeliness and uprootedness, measures and proportion, space and balance. Taking the case study of Manhattan’s Park Avenue after WWII, Maria Berman examines the theme of duplication in architecture. Doris van Drathen finds in Leonor Antunes’ work the use of “measurement” as a tool of grasping the world. Nuria Enguita Mayo addresses the problems of duplication, faktura and restriction, while Ricardo Nicolau reflects on the dialogue of the artist with the architecture of the Serralves Villa and the memory of other buildings from the history of modernism.

Author: Leonor Antunes
Publisher: BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE
Language: English
Binding: Softcover
ISBN: 978-3-943514-19-3
€24.00

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Dagmar Heppner, Hannah James, Charlotte Moth

Posted in Exhibition catalogue, Exhibitions, Motto Berlin store on March 21st, 2012
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An exhibition catalogue produced on the occasion of the exhibition Dagmar Heppner Hannah James Charlotte Moth at Cole Gallery London  2012. This publication archives a conversation that took place over a period of one month between Dagmar Heppner, Hannah James, Charlotte Moth and Allia Ali, as a response to the to the exhibition.

D 6.50€

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