a.k.a. (also known as)
Starring:
Jesper Alvaer
Ondrej Brody
Illya Chichkan
Ilia Kitup
Matthias Mayer aka Mo Magic
Kristofer Paetau
Lars Ramberg
Tere Recarens
Richard Schütz
Avdey Ter-Oganyan
Sergej Voronzov
Opening-Karreoke by:
Sunny Im & Patrick Jambon
Curated by:
Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau
A.K.A. (also known as) is a groupshow that aims to experiment and to play with the idea of authorship and the question of (mis-) interpretation. The rules of the show are the following: Each artist writes down the idea of the work he wants to realize for this show. The description of the work can be as loose or as precise as he wants. Then we make a tombola out of the ideas and each artist realizes the idea he pics up.
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JESPER ALVAER (Norway)
... Alvaer‘s expression is very efficient. He lays out a scene, or what he calls a metaphor, for viewers – and within a few seconds he is able to induce an emotional response.
this is accomplished without narrative; instead he prefers to record everyday phenomena, scenes from life that carry little significancewhen they happen, so we tend to shut them out and not pay much attention to them. However, he somehow identifies the fragments that remain and become embedded in our consciousness: Alvaer actually reveals little wonders.
... His approach to recording reality is objective, almost documentary. Alvaer then gives the observed phenomena intriguing meanings, new contexts. Incidentally, he also exposes obscured systems, social codes, unwritten rules and unconscious bad habits. Despite their documentary character the resulting video sequences are very poetic, never crude.
Exctracts from „Little Wonders“, text by Vladan Sir in Umelec International, vol. 6, 2002
Gin&Yang , video, 2002
SHORT CV
Born: 15.05.1973, Copenhagen.
2004 desidolize now, Jeune Creation 2004, Grande halle de la Vilette, Paris (group)
2004 Further Passages, The Renaissance Society, Chicago (New Video, New Europe), curated by Hamza Walker (group)
2003 K & S Gallery, Berlin (group)
2003 Old habits die hard, Sparwasser HQ, Berlin (group)
2003 Oslo Open 2003, Oslo, Public art (group)
2003 In/Out, Prague, Budapest, (Trafo) International festival of the digital image (group)
2002 Umelec presentation, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Videoprogram (group)
2002 Fair, Royal College of Art, London, U.K.Installation, videoprogram with PAS (group)
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ONDREJ BRODY (Equador)
A: How many sentences do you need to describe myself?
B: I don‘t know man, 4 or 5 ...
A: How would you describe me?
B: Describe what?
A: How would you describe me?
B: You?
A: Yeah
B: You mean as a person or your work?
A: Whatever
B: I don‘t know man, make it traditional... „The work of A.B. is dealing with ...“
SHORT CV:
Born: 22.03. 1980, Prague
2003 Compression, Berlin, with Display Gallery-Prague (group)
2003 Galerie & Projekte Mathias Kampl, Berlin, ArtCubicle-Project in Progress (group)
2003 In&Out, Prague International festival of the digital image
2003 Survey 03, Futura gallery, Prague Group show- contemporary Czech art show
2002 Pas Press, Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Project with the PAS group and Umelec
2002 Mlady maso (Young flesh), Galerie u Zlateho Prstenu, Prague (group
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ILLYA CHICHKAN (Ukraina)
Illya Chichkan uses the photographic medium in an installation format to reveal fragments of social history amid the present saturated environment of fast-paced transformation and subject to reinterpretation. In his former works, Chichkan photographically integrated aspects of domestic life, objects which illuminate past cultural stereotypes and social practices and staged scenes from family environments drawn from the artist's personal context. (...)
Marta Kuzma
SHORT CV:
Born 1967, Kyiv, Ukraine
Group exhibitions :
2004:
Manifesta 5 (upcoming)
Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (upcoming)
1999
New Europe, Postfuhramt, Berlin, Germany
Carte Blanche a Boris Mykhailov, Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris, France
1998
Crimean Project II, Soros Center for Contemporary Art Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
Intermedia, Soros Center for Contemporary Art Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
1997
Purple and Green: Illya Chichkan, Annika von Hausswolff, Johannesburg Biennale, Pretorian Art Museum, South Africa
1996
International Sao Paolo Biennale, Sao Paolo, Brazil
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ILIA KITUP (Lithuania)
I try to work clearly and intelligibly both to myself and to the public. I think that art should be interesting to the author as well as those around him - attractive, amusing to adults and children, to young people and old ones. At times I succeed in meeting those standards. I’ll go on trying for that in future.
Ilia Kitup is a founding member of the most alternative Soviet comics fanzine in English, Kitup's Own Propeller Comics. Ilia also writes poetry and prose, paints and plays ska music. He lives in Berlin, but continues to fight for the recognition of alternative comics in Russia.
Misha & Grisha, 2001, comic - Chunga Lunga, 2001, oil on canvas
SHORT CV:
1964 born in Vilnius
2003 Galerie Paula Böttcher, Berlin (solo)
1995 "Reproduction - mon amour". Contemporary Art Center "Nikolaj". Copenhagen, Denmark (group)
1993 "Monuments: Transformation for the Future". PS1, New York, USA (group)
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MATTHIAS MAYER AKA MO MAGIC (Germany)
Matthias Mayer developed into an artist on the street, where his influences came from by being a nobody, a traveller. Continously he formed his work from zero to a whole complex including painting, sculpture, installation, photography and video.
For a while he followed the traces of Keith Haring, by looking up to somebody who
as well created his own world. Mayer found his stage name: Mo Magic, as a result
of his autodidactic practice.
Keith Haring painting on Berlin Wall in 1986 and Mo Magic painting on wall at Peter and Paul Fortress, St. Petersburg, Russia in 1995, 2004, 360 x 250 cm, acrylic on PVC.
SHORT CV
born 1967, Worms, Germany
selected solo (s) and group (g) shows
2004 Passages- Contemporary Art Center Troyes, France (s)
2004 Art direct, Mainz (g)
2004 Representation of the Land Rhineland-Palatinate, Berlin (g)
2004 „Desidolize now“ , Jeune Creation at Grande Halle de la Vilette, Paris (g)
2003 raum2, Mannheimer Kunstverein (s)
2002 Media Arts Prize, Bellevuesaal, Wiesbaden (g)
2002 Kunstverein Bad Kreuznach, soloshow
1999 Institut Francais, Mainz, soloshow
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KRISTOFER PAETAU (Finland)
Most of the time, I use ‘found’ photographs from private homepages as working basis. I am interested in questions dealing with human representation and identity, particularly in shortcuts and in the confusion often occurring when ‘normal’ people decide to imitate and to subvert images delivered by media
I am interested in producing a “look-a-like” art that actually anybody could (re-) produce, just as anybody could become an Elvis Presley imitator (you just have to buy the right wig). I am interested in the critical potential of parody. I am interested in everything “all too human”, which involves comedy as well as tragedy. I am also interested in the “openness” of pictures, in their dependence to a context and in their capacity to gain new meaning through a new context. This makes them easy to manipulate and difficult to control.
Kristofer Paetau, 2003
GENE SPITTING FIRE (KISS FAN-ART RE-DRAWING) 2004
black edding marker on paper 133 x 320 cm
SHORT CV:
Born: 1972 in Borgå, Finland
2004 Biennale de Paris: "Picturepeople" e-mail project, with Rüdiger Heinze. (catalogue in preparation) (group)
2004 "Desidolize now", groupshow, curated by Kristofer Paetau, Grande Halle de la Villette, Paris (catalogue) (group)
2004 Arte Fiera Bologna (art fair): The Flat, Galerie Massimo Carasi (group)
2003 “Out of Berlin”, Le Lab, Strasbourg, France (catalogue in preparation) (group)
2003 2 Persons show: “TWICE: Kristofer Paetau & Kirstine Roepstorff”, The Flat gallery, Milano, Italy (catalogue)
2003 Mi-Art Fair, Milano, Italy (group)
2003 “Southbound”, Leipziger Str. 54, Berlin, Germany (catalogue) (group)
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LARS RAMBERG (Norway)
Lars Ramberg's artistic strategy defines itself against this background through referring to basically insignificant, apparently straightforward situations and then revealing their true potential as meaning-laden, symbolically charged contexts of objects and actions.
Thus, in several projects in the mid-nineties, he enacted interventions within communication and information contexts.
(...) He had a well-known advertising agency, which was also responsible for the museum's press campaigns, work up a "profile" of the artist Lars Ramberg and then exhibited the result in the directorial room of the museum. For someone with some understanding of contemporary art, it was strange to take note of the result in its combination between uncomprehension and business acumen. If Lars Ramberg had followed the well-meaning advice of the advertising strategists as an artist, his artistic career would have soon been over.
Gertrud Sandqvist
SHORT CV:
Groupshows:
2004 "no", Galerie Kai Hilgemann , Berlin
2004 Berlin North Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart , Berlin
2004 Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Norwegen Galerie Kai Hilgemann , Berlin
2002 "TV-Dinner " performance im Fernsehturm, Berlin
2002 "Where Am I Now?" Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo
2002 "Logo " Rogaland Art Museum, Stavanger
2001 "SOFT BOYS FOR HARD TIMES" Sparwasser H Q - Forum for contemporary art , Berlin
2001 "OFFENBAR " Berlin Project, performance in Oslo Kunsthall, Oslo
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RICHARD SCHÜTZ (Germany)
Still we are celebrating the pleasures of destruction, the lust over the fragmented. With it we realize the liberty of the subject, the control of the individual upon what has been set for him. But again a desire for perfection announces itself too, the wish for an aesthetics, which does not exclude the snotty and destructive but on the contrary has it as its basis, yet embracing it with a gesture of harmony.
Richard Schuetz
SHORT CV:
Born 1965 in Frankfurt / M.
2003 A-TOPIA Goethe Institute Inter Nationes Athens
Images Against War Lichtblick Galerie, Cologne / www.imagesagainstwar.de
Die Lawine von morgen und der Schnee von gestern Galerie im Koernerpark, Berlin
2002 Harmlose Welt Galerie im Park, Bremen.
2002 Artistenmtaphysik Haus am Waldsee / exhibitions of contemporary art, Berlin.
2001 off<area> @ Artbase, the net art collection of Rhizome.org, New York.
2000 off<area> @ EXPO 2000
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AVDEY TER-OGANYAN (Russia)
Just as Moscow has never had any works by the great Phydius, will she hardly ever have any Jasper Johns either. The project of Avdey Ter-Oganyan is utopian - to hang the painting by Johns, "The Flag", on the flagpole of the US Embassy’s pompous building. The ambassador found such an eccentric and unprecedented action in the art world rather amusing. All the more so since the famous painiting was not at all meant to be a parody...
Excerpts from: À.Yerofeyev "Avdey Ter-Oganyan". Segodnya 11 Sept,1993
Theo van Doesburg. Contra-Construction XVI, 2003, oil on canvas - Self-Portrait in the Mask of an Alcoholic, 1995, Coloured photo
SHORT CV
1961 – Born in Rostov on Don, Russia
2003 Informal painting. Guelman Gallery, Moscow (solo)
2002 Contemporary Russian Painting, New Manege, Moscow. (group)
2002 Ex Patria. Art Car Museum, Houston, USA. (group)
2002 Silence! Space of Art Experimentation Vytah, Prague. (group)
2002 Instead of Art. Zverevsky Center of Modern Art, Moscow (group)
2001 Chaleau d`Oiron, Oiron, France. (solo)
2001 Vodka. Guelman Gallery, Kiev, Ukraine (solo)
Collections:
State Tretjakov Gallery, Moscow.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Museum of Fine Arts, Rostov-Don.
Christian Keesee Collection, Oklahoma City Art Museum, USA
Private collections of E.Nutovich, V.Ovcharenko, N.Brilling, M.Guelman, Moscow
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SERGEJ VORONZOV (Russia)
Voronzov works with materials he happens to have within reach, most of the time everyday objects found from the garbage... Still he is able to infuse this raw material with a sensually and visually pungeant content.
The uncertainty of any clear artistic position reminds us of one essential caracteristic of the russian Avantgarde: the weakness of all artistic idealism in comparison to the destructive forces of society and nature.
"Guitar", 2003.
SHORT CV:
Born 1960 in Moskow
Solo shows:
1993
Unlustige Bilderchen II, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
1994
Visionäre Träume, Art 5 III, Galerie Inge Herbert, Berlin
Zärtliche Vergnügungen, Galerie Grün, Bremen
1998
Neue Bilder und Objekte, Galerie Petersen und Partner, Berlin
2001
„Privat“, Museum of contemporary art, Moscow