Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, Germany
13 Feb 2016 - 10 Apr 2016
For the exhibition LOVE IV: Cold Shower Anthea Hamilton and Nicholas Byrne inhabit the Schinkel Pavillon with an installation of their large, free-standing, brightly-coloured inflatable sculptures.
The exhibition brings together existing and newly commissioned inflatables from the series LOVE, on which the duo periodically collaborates on since 2012. The inflatables take over the exhibition space, both celebrating and collapsing the original experience of an image with their ambiguous presence. The panoramic windows and the octagonal symmetry of the Schinkel Pavillon augment the scale confusion inherent in the image and continue the formal game of translating a reproduction into a blow up. The inflatables are architectural in scale and were originally conceived as buildings or characters populating a street scene. The images are culled freely from a range of sources ranging from art history, popular culture and the aesthetic of the souvenir.
Without a clear set of criteria they are selected based on a heavy interlocking system of references that is representative of the idiosyncratic manner of the collaboration – in need of the titular cold shower to release the tension of compactness. With the exhibition LOVE IV: Cold Shower the Schinkel Pavillon initiates the new series Porzellan und Vulkan. Kollaborative Praxis (Porcelain and Volcano. Collaborative Practice). The yearlong series of exhibitions unfolds as a group exhibition presented in temporal succession that surveys forms of collaborative working manners as a strategy in contemporary artistic practice. Porzellan und Vulkan features positions that question traditional concepts of authorship, artistic subjectivity and the division of labour while contextualising the mobilisation of personal relationships and the ingrained position of social networks in the way artist work today.
The LOVE series by Anthea Hamilton and Nicholas Byrne is an ever-growing collection of objects: a kimono (First LOVE Kimono, 2013), a set of animations (LOVE: Calypsos, 2009 and LOVE: LXVX, 2014) and an ongoing series of large inflatables LOVE, 2012-ongoing. The inflatables have previously been shown at Frieze Projects East, 2012 (commissioning institution); Glasgow International, Govanhill Baths, 2013 and Burning Down the House: 10th Gwangju Biennale, 2014.
The exhibition is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation)
Anthea Hamilton is also one of the six artists, commissioned by Frieze New York 2016 to produce a new artwork as part of the Frieze Projects program both inside the fair and around Randall’s Island Park, Manhattan, taking place from May 5 to 8.
Anthea Hamilton, AQUARIUS, 2012. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Balfou
This year’s program explores the magical possibilities of artistic intervention, with performances, sculptures and clandestine actions, which subvert the fair environment in unexpected and often humorous ways.
Inside the fair, British artist Anthea Hamilton reinterprets an iconic project by Italian architect Mario Bellini by paying tribute to his Kar-A-Sutra, a futuristic inhabitable car conceived in 1972.
