Modart » Berlin

The Solution Is Irrelevant – 44Flavours

Janina Hübner — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 12:35:01 +0000

The Solution Is Irrelevant, The Solution Is Irrelevant, the title of the upcoming exhibition curated by 44flavours and Clemens Behr, is meant to evoke not only an approach to creativity and the act of creating, but also a life philosophy. For the duration of the vernissage, the Epicentro Artspace will be transformed into a multimedia, interdisciplinary laboratory, where performance and video art, design, music, spoken word, sound treatment, sculpture, painting, and installations will interact simultaneously without a screenplay or a preset agenda.

The Solution Is Irrelevant (Teaser) from 44flavours on Vimeo.

On board for the experiment: the 44flavours art collective, installation artist Clemens Behr, film directors Pol Ponsarnau and Yves Kasten, musicians Robot Koch, Sneaky, Lars Kirchbach, and spoken word artist RQM. The entire “performance” will be documented on video and will be screened at Epicentro art daily; presented in the form of video installations alongside other finished artifacts The Solution Is Irrelevant

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23.08.2012
The Solution

23.08.2012
The Solution Is Irrelevant

Opening:
Donnerstag 23. August, 19 Uhr

Running time:
24. August – 06. September 2012

Opening hours: Di–Sa 12-18h
Place: Epicentro art
Karl Marx Allee 82-84
10243 Berlin
Eintritt: FREI

Nine years of Party Arty

Elise — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 07:07:45 +0000

This year marks the 9th year anniversary of the Berlin based event Party Arty. Run by the self proclaimed art dictator Jan Kage, the event has become one of the strongest and longest standing references for events that pull together an extreme melting pot of different artistic mediums, cultures, crowds and styles. The birthday event featured an impressive exhibition featuring 53 artists and collectives shown in the hospital-turned-cultural-centre the Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien. As well as the 38th edition of the party in the former factory club Ritter Butzke with DJ’s, spoken word, live painting and installations. The following is an interview with the big man himself; Jan Kage.

Modart: This year is the 9th anniversary of Party Arty. What was the original idea and why did you start the event?
JK: Like the motto says it’s a “night of vibes from different tribes”. I come from a Hip Hop background and I was kind of bored with a subculture where everybody thinks they are a rebel when in fact they have more rules than their own parents. As luck had it I was on a tour bus with some people from D.I.T.C, it was Party Arty the rapper. And I thought that was a great name, so I was like fuck, I like that name and I want to make a party with all of the arts involved!

Two or three months later we started in a little club called Lovelite. I always had two floors, one for so called black music and one for so called electro. Two worlds that would not generally meet back in those days. I didn’t show street art and graffiti until Party Arty Vol 5 or 6. I didn’t want to meet expectations that a guy from the hip hop world would show that.

We always had spoken word, it wasn’t just a poetry slam. It could be short stories, could be poetry, whatever, just spoken word. That’s how it got off. It was fun and I decided to do another one, but I didn’t really have a plan to take it this far.

After four years Lovelite decided to close down. So I went to Club 103 and this changed the rules of the game. I needed a bigger name for the dance floor; I had to pay higher wages. Before everybody got the same no matter how famous or unfamous you were. Everybody got 100 Euro, a socialist payment, because art is not a democracy it’s a dictatorship. I’m a dictator and everybody is created equal in my dictatorship. I’m a good dictator, but my arrogant taste of course decides if you’re in it or not. Then we were in 103 and after a few years they decided to close down and in the end I ended up in Ritter Butzke, where I have been for two years now.

M: One of the main elements of Party Arty is the mix of different genres from the spoken word to the electro, hip hop and visual artists from completely different fields. What is the biggest difficulty in putting on an event like that?
JK: For an exhibition like this the biggest challenge is to make sense in the hanging. You have people that are completely different, how do you hang them on one wall, or in this case on forty walls? What you can do is go through colour shades or forms that correspond. And then it is really interesting because then you can open up a communication between works that wouldn’t communicate because normally they wouldn’t be in the same location in the first place. But now you have something swinging between them that opens up this conversation.

Also, like we said this whole eclecticism is bound to my person. Who I like, I invite artistically and personally. I don’t want to work with assholes just because they are good at what they do. We gotta show my person in it too, show that there is someone behind it that invited all of them.

M: Over the nine years that you have been doing the event what have been the changes in what is happening in Berlin?
JK: In Berlin? Cats like you moved in. It got way more international with a lot of people that don’t speak German and have their own little American, Australian, Canadian, communities. That changed a little bit, at first everyone was like “Youhou we’re international, we’re like a metropolis now”. But now all the Turkish and German cats are really like “ah another American, hip and broke and can’t speak the language…walking the street with a can of beer in his hand…”.

Actually what has happened in the last 9 years and that is not all due to Party Arty is that Hip Hop turned pretty electro and electro got more of a snare drum to it. These worlds got a little closer. So I was maybe on the early tip of the zeitgeist.

Also Urban Arts had a big hype and some cats like Banksy and Blu were respected by the academic world. The street artists I know no longer want to have the label of “street artist” any more because they felt like the hype is over. The more serious ones like Various and Gould have gone to art school and they still do their urban interventions and they still do their beautiful collages and prints in the street but the whole thing changed.

M: Would you ever do a Party Arty in another city?
JK: We did! We did one in Hamburg, the Party Arty Hanseaty. We did one in the south of Germany near Munich, and we did one in Rostock when the G8 summit was there. I’d love to do more of that but logistically it’s quite a bit of work since we are no longer as small and experimental anymore. We have international artist in the Party Arty army, something like 8 or nine nations are represented, and all kind of ethnic groups. In that sense it is international. But we would love to do it in other cities, especially New York, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Brussels of course, I love Brussels, maybe Zurich, Milano, Moscow, and Beijing, no fuck Beijing do it in Shanghai…

M: And what do you predict is the future for you and the event?
JK: I don’t know. I mean I’ve been doing this for nine years now and it doesn’t look like I want to stop. It’s still fun. It’s a huge production to get ten musicians on stage and give them a good sound; you really need to have a good technique. It’s much more than just having a DJ there which would be way less effort and way more profitable. Party Arty is not always profitable but it’s a huge playground for artists to explore other sides of what they do. That is really satisfying and the reason why I do it.

Exhbition closes June 17th!
Mariannenplatz 2
10997 Berlin / Germany

SERIGRAFFEUR

Elise — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 07:18:26 +0000

“The Work of Art in the Age of Manual Reproduction”

SERIGRAFFEUR is a new Gallery/Shop in Friedrichshain. It opens in Spring 2012 under impulsion of Tom Singier and offers a large collection of Art-prints like Posters and Handcrafted Books. Thanks to a really simple way of showing the whole range of artists in poster displays, and a “fully-magnetized-wall-technology”, this small but pretty place changes his aspect almost every two weeks, and invites to events called “Accrochages” on Saturdays, with performances and/or concerts. The Collection is Composed with a Core of Silkscreeners living in Berlins is already huge and grows every single week with new Berliner and International artists. The Collective Czentrifuga is even organizing his own events in the Gallery, and got the keys every Fridays, calling it “Czentrifuga Spechstunde”.

Actual Artists:
DAEYE • CZENTRIFUGA • BEAT • OLIVIA PILS • ARDECO • ALBERT FOOLMOON • PEACH BEACH • FOGEL JUNGE • 10H23 • SP38 • ZONZO • DAMIEN TRAN • 10EUROS83 • SUSANN POENISCH • ROLAND BARTH • ANJA&KASKA • GABBA REIFENSTUHL • NICHOLAS KNAPTON • HLG • JULIENNE JATTIOT • BOB RUTMAN • MARKO KROJAK • JONAS KAKOSCHKE • USW •••

Best of Neonchocolate Gallery: .COMPRESSED exhibition+auction

Janina Hübner — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 10:20:18 +0000

In its almost two years of existence, Neonchocolate Gallery introduced Berlin in quick succession to exiting works by young national and international artists.

Now the gallery is truly turning up the heat with the exhibition .COMPRESSED – a collection of one hundred handpicked works of urban art, painting, photography, illustration, collage, and design – which will be on view at Berlin’s .HBC March 5–8, 2012 and culminate in a live auction. The exhibition is curated by Oliver Thoben and Uwe Neu in cooperation with Kat Wilhelm, formerly of Christie’s London. Fares Al Hasan (www.fly-auctions.com), a licensed art auctioneer and collector who has conducted over forty successful auctions to date, will lead the final evening.

Modart is proud to be a partner of this exquisite gallery in Berlin – the people behind this gallery are really passionate and became good friends of us.

The auction and preceding exhibition .COMPRESSED will be held at .HBC Berlin, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 9.

Art Auction: March 8, 2012 at 7 pm
Preview and Exhibition: March 5–8, daily 7 pm – midnight

Johannes Baptista Ludwig

Janina Hübner — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:25:09 +0000

We met Johannes some time ago with his beautiful, rotten comic zombie-sculptures and were amazed.
He is closely connected to the neonchocolate gallery in Berlin and eager to see things, people or comic-idols from his unique different point of view.

The majority of cartoon idols like mickey mouse, bugs bunny or garfield, have been abused
and exploited by their very own creators due to growing markes and profit gains since we can remember. So ask yourself if the appearance of them is still the right one in anatomic terms
or also the right appearance for a character that has become a product and sold his soul.
Logically, for those idols it is time to decay and Johannes Baptista Ludwig frazzles away the cosy sheepskin to reveal a honest and coherent visitation of those cartoon zombies.

Johannes, who lives and works in Cologne, argues that a mouse lives about two to three years,.. somtimes even longer, the appearance has to change. Mickey mouse, invented by walt as a temporary solution in the year 1928, can`t appear the way it does since 90 years. Also garfield, a bit younger, is not looking so fresh anymore after having british lasagna the last 40 years. So using bones, dental technician odds and ends and other Material has felt as logical to Johannes as the fact that soj sauce brings a wonderful effect of dry, old rancid blood on his boney toons.

Successful exhibitions in the past year and his first apperance with the neon chocolate gallery at last years stroke artfair 2011 in Berlin, he left a promising impression in Berlins urbanart scene. The artist works and lives in Cologne since three years and his creativity reaches a wide range and can`t be reduced down to comic, graffitti or streetart alone. “That wouldn´t cope with my intentions.” Johannes Baptista Ludwig told us.

Modart at STROKE ArtFair

Janina Hübner — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:06:54 +0000

We arrived at STROKE ArtFair today…..we will be here to present our Book #2 and to be back in Berlin once again. Our team will produce a Tv feature from the fair which will be ready on saturaday. Until then we’ll show you a lot of pictures from everything that’s going on.

Some more pictures from Stroke 2011:

44Flavours are designing the booth since this afternoon – i think it will take one more day for them to finish our beautiful weekend-residence.

Update, Monday 1p.m.:
We are back from Stroke since yesterday night and our cutter did not find any sleep until he finished this clip about the Stroke 2011.
For all of you who weren’t there.

iHAD

Janina Hübner — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:22:45 +0000

Raphael Grischa

Berlin is presently one of the most exiting art metropolises of our world. A few great, lots of small and many wannabe artists are hanging around there. iHad is one of them on the way up. His personal path has let him from a postcard village of Switzerland, into the heart of Berlin. This city is a fixed point in his young nomadic career; he dived into the big cities like London, lived among other places like the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

As a street artist he has left his trail and scent. These outdoor creations mirror back into his experience and knowledge, which can be read of and seen in his continuous artworks. A breakfast with representatives from the Brazilian underworld or the obligatory qualms with the beautiful gender, are just exemplary creative life moments in which iHad sucks negative and positive experiences into him. These are conserved and then reappear in good time as new condensed works of art.

His unique mix of themes, techniques and changing perspectives give iHad a special place in the present scene in Berlin with its own conventions, from where he pulls himself free with all his might, to set his own marked spot in and though his artwork.

Rebel Goes Berlin – Exhibition

Janina Hübner — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:01:34 +0000

At the family and friends private opening of the Rebel Offices in Berlin, guests were treated to a rare glimpse of works collected by Modart Magazine, featuring outsider artists that Rebel supported before the rest of the world was ready for it.

Artwork included pieces from artists like Jim Avignon, Blu, Jeroen Jongeleen (Influenza) Stephen Smith (Neasden Control Centre), Will Barras (Scrawl Collective/No New Enemies), Tim Biskup, Stefan Strumbel and others who have gone on to influence the future of art and culture, moving from low to high and sweating out a legacy that only looks like it appeared overnight.

After a brief introduction to the work from the Modart crew, things were predictable in the only way that Rebel ever is: they rocked and rolled as people stuck around until the sun rose, the music stopped and the generous bar was empty.

There is a tremble in Berlin and it just began spreading from the new Rebel Offices.

IN RESPONSE TO THE SKY. BREATHING

Castle Magazine — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:21:24 +0000

IN RESPONSE TO THE SKY. BREATHING

solo show by Jeff Faerber and Lars Henkel

curator Luisa Catucci
4TH JULY / 31ST AUGUST 2011
Opening Monday 4th July h20:00 – 23:00
improvisation-dance performance by Fenia Kotsopoulou
live ambient music and light installation by MotoM

From the 4th of July until the end of August, Cell63 artgallery is glad to host a double solo-show by the American artist Jeff Faerber and the German artist Lars Henkel.
Very different from one to the other in style and media, the two artists are bonded by similar sensibilities, poetry, spiritual research and a long term admiration for each other’s work.
In the exhibition, Jeff Faerber will present his very latest works, expressly painted for the show, containing lot of references and little homages to Lars’s work, who will show different pieces from the last 2 years.
Human beings, nature, mystic and poetry; opening of perspectives, fantasy and soul: Jeff Faerber and Lars Henkel are ready to offer us some touching emotions.

In response to the sky: breathing.
Luisa Catucci

about Jeff Faerber:
With a nod to the pop surreal, the figures in Jeff Faerber’s works are reminiscent of Egon Schiele’s: thin and bony, yet more mischievous than melancholy.
Many of his works wax political while Faerber also explores his love for life, erotica and his environs with an eclectic mixture of subjects and and intelligent sense of humor.
“I am fascinated by the act of creation, whether in a set of beliefs or in a painting. By recreating the world—making a fake world on a two-dimensional surface—I often find a truth more understandable than that of the real world. What systems can I (we) create to understand the universe, good and evil, bliss? Metaphors simplify elusive ideas so one’s mind can wrap around them. I use them to help define an emotion, capture a faint impression of reality—evil can
become a snake, God’s spirit can descend like a dove, a downcast eye can define sadness. The intangible become tangible.”
Thus Faerber uses invented and borrowed iconography to mix meaning and try to make sense of what seems absurd.
Often collaging found materials and painting over them, Faerber’s work is heavily textured and tactile. In his latest series photographs of leaves and twigs become wings on pensive figures. His art is extraordinarily appealing, attractive and strange.

by Samantha Levin

about Lars Henkel:
In recent years Lars Henkel has created internationally acclaimed works of art in which he interstices drawings, collage and film to produce a striking visual cosmos.
Lars experiments with the possibilities of collage, producing ambiguity on the edges of its contrasting elements.
He describes his way of creating images almost like a medium: he works instinctively, is skeptical about meaning and searches for the mysterious. He catches something, assembles elements into pictures and then passes them on.
His world is populated by creatures that look like bio-montages and produce an effect reminiscent of an unfinished
rendering process that has fled into an artificial romanticism of nature, a surreal, melancholic dream world. As Lars explains, the representations of nature refer to motifs from Romanticism (e.g. W.Turner, C.D. Friedrich or W. Blake) and play with different references from A. Stifter’s nature descriptions to Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden.”
But “The forest there comes as much from my own experiences as from the myths and images that are a part of our collective consciousness.”
The philosophy of Romanticism conceptualized the broken image, or vague fragment, in literature as well as art. Nor does Lars seek to represent nature as an idyllic dream world. In his motifs, inconsistencies and contrasts question the aesthetic facade and make multiple interpretations possible.

By Martin tom Dieck

Neonchocolate Gallery

Janina Hübner — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 15:31:40 +0000

The Neonchocolate Gallery was founded in May 2010 by Uwe Neu and Oliver Thoben.

Up to three artists share the rooms of the Neonchocolate Gallery for a period of one week and visitors are invited to a viewing of their works each Saturday evening. Since the opening of the gallery space, over 100 exhibitions have been held featuring up-and-coming young artists as well as more established figures in the fields of illustration, photography, design, urban art, painting and collage. For diverse exhibitions the gallery works in collaboration with curators, amongst them Professor Lukas Feireiss and Henrik Hellige of the Gestalten publishing company.

Artists
Evol / Mario Wagner / 44Flavours / Pisa73 / Mike Friedrich / Matthias und Felix Gephart / Jan Feindt / Christian Rothenhagen / Tim Dinter / Jonas Liveröd / Erik Göngrich / Ice Cream For Free / Robert G. Bartholot / Matthias Heiderich / Simon Prades / …