KW Institute for Contemporary Art presents the first institutional exhibition by Estonian artist Kris Lemsalu Malone (born in 1985, EE) in Germany. Since Performa 17, Kris Lemsalu Malone has collaborated with New York-based artist and multi-instrumentalist Kyp Malone Lemsalu (born in 1973, US) to create enhanced installations and performances encompassing sculpture, ceramics, animation, performative elements as well as music and sound.

Kris Lemsalu Malone creates sculptures, installations, and performances that fuse the animal kingdom with humankind, nature with the artificial, beauty with repulsion, lightness with gravity, and life with death. She combines animal bodies and porcelain objects with found (natural) material such as furs, leather, seashells, wool, or paper in theatrical installations that whisk us off into a world of fantastic imagination. Endeavoring to erase any distance between herself and her objects, the artist also uses her installations as stages for performance pieces in which her sculptures become an integral part of her attire. Her works carry the memory of local mythologies onto the surfaces of objects that resemble artifacts and byproducts of contemporary civilization.

The exhibition at KW presents a newly conceived body of work as a continuation of the multifaceted collaboration between the—in the meantime married—duo. The large-scale installation will take up the entire third floor and will serve as an environment in which the lines between objects, bodies, and action are blurred.

During the opening Kris Lemsalu Malone and Kyp Malone Lemsalu will enliven this environment with a new performance to create an enchanting spatial continuum. Through the ephemeral embodiment the duo enhances the blending of seemingly opposed dualities such as object and subject, animals and mankind, life and death, as well as the power and vulnerability of longstanding mythologies, rituals and one’s own narrative.

Curator: Cathrin Mayer
Assistant Curator: Léon Kruijswijk

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststraße 69
10117 Berlin

kw-berlin.de