Bode Projects, Berlin, Germany
26 Nov 2020 - 23 Jan 2021
Patrick Alston, Atlantic Blues, 2020, acrylic, ink, oil, oil stick and spray paint on sewn tarp, canvas, plastic and fabric 76.2 x 76.2 cm (30 x 30 in), Copyright the artist
In times of lockdowns where institutions and museums stay closed, but galleries remain open, galleries take on the responsibility of keeping the discussion and dialogue open in order to remain a place of culture. “If Yesterday Was tomorrow What Is Today” presents positions with notes on contemplation in Minimalism, Neo Expressionism, Drawing and figurative Painting.
The disruption that societies experience in a crisis, in systematic faults of truth and facts, in fractured cracks of time, in the form of materiality, through state power; it rises in movements, it oscillates between impatience, silence and inquietude in transitional times. When meanings are inconstant, yet remain the same, time eludes its expediency.
»What seems natural to us is probably just something familiar in a long tradition that has forgotten the unfamiliar source from which it arose. And yet this unfamiliar source once struck man as strange and caused him to think and to wonder.« Our reliance on the current interpretation of the thing is only seemingly well-founded, Martin Heidegger made a notable impact on time and being in subsequent philosophy, art theory and other fields.
The history of arts is a history of pigments and dyes, oils, acrylics, silver nitrate and gelatine, one could use them to paint, to make a photograph, to print on the pages of a book or in contemporary artistic production today. Images have begun to intervene in everyday life, their functions changing from representation to activation, operations and enforcement.
“If Yesterday Was tomorrow What Is Today” presents a generation of artists who grew up with the internet, in a constant state of ecological crisis and debate about immigration. The themes are centered on the scenarios of solitude, phobia, of desire and radical doubt in the artist’s studio. On historical acts of displacement and trauma, opposed with the potency of isolation and of inherent instability in interconnected worlds, we see the need for new ways to construct visual archives and emphasize the contemporary production and documentation of today.
With: Patrick Alston, Paula Baader, Mia Chaplin, Pius Fox, Lucas Kaiser, Tahir Karmali, Maximiliano Leon, Yolanda Mazwana, Frank Moll, Franziska Reinbothe, Laura Sachs, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Isaac Zavale
Bode Projects,
Fasanenstr. 28,
10719 Berlin
