Cecilia Edefalk, Fred Eversley, Asta Gröting, Lena Henke, Arturo Herrera, Ann Veronica Janssens, Tarik Kiswanson, Jean-Luc Moulène, Bojan Šarčević, Thomas Schütte, Nida Sinnokrot, Marianna Uutinen, Rosha Yaghmai, Dolores Zinny
Looking Through the Threshold
A trapezoid occupies the centre of the exhibition space, its form mirroring the load-bearing concrete beam of the gallery’s sawtooth roof. It was the idea conceived by the curator of the last exhibition, Friedrich Meschede, to present the space as a stage for the artists of the gallery’s 30 year history.
Asta Gröting, Wolf and Dog, 2021, 4K digital video with sound, duration: 9.58 min. Courtesy of the artist and carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid. Film stills © Asta Gröting
Inspired by the ensuing spatial dichotomy and the fabulous literary nonsense of
Alice in Wonderland, we invite you to pass through Lena Henke’s work as through a portal, to leave one state for another. On one side of the beam is a realm of marvel, playfulness and animism, where works by Lena Henke, Asta Gröting, Cecilia Edefalk, Bojan Šarčević and Arturo Herrera question the relationship between representation, myth, culture and the natural and supernatural worlds.
The work Wolf and Dog (2021) by Asta Gröting has its premiere in the context of this exhibition. The encounter between a female dog and two wolves, recorded with a high-speed camera, is shown in extreme slow-motion imagery. The images capture the exchange of glances and the communication between the animals whose common pedigree dates back 23,000 years.
Looking Through the Threshold, exhibition view at carlier | gebauer, Berlin, 2022. Courtesy of the artists and carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid. Photo: Trevor Good / carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid.
On the other side, beyond the beam, Asta Gröting’s façades and Nida Sinnokrot’s Rubber-coated Rocks are anchored in different historical experiences, testifying to a temporal distortion between memory and moment. Rosha Yaghmai’s elegant, fragile sculpture Optometer, Hairpin (2021) composed of an assemblage of building materials and corrective lenses, oscillate between sedimentation and transparency and, through the prisms of the lenses, direct our gaze from the hidden to the visible.
Looking Through the Threshold, exhibition view at carlier | gebauer, Berlin, 2022. Courtesy of the artists and carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid. Photo: Trevor Good / carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid.
Looking Through the Threshold, exhibition view at carlier | gebauer, Berlin, 2022. Courtesy of the artists and carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid. Photo: Trevor Good / carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid.
This work forms a spatial, conceptual and material threshold between two distinct experiences. It instigates transition, unburdens us from the material density of the preceding rooms. Thomas Schütte’s wall installation Goldene Ringe (1981/2022) materializes the light within the room, Fred Eversley’s parabolic lens concentrates the energy of the surrounding space, while Canicule #3 (2011-2017) by Ann Veronica Janssens and Gentle Memento Mori (2020) by Marianna Uutinen impel our bodies to move, to feel as much as we look.