Jacob Birken

The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds After 1989

Jacob — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:00:56 +0000

After two years of preparation the exhibition The Global Contemporary opened at ZKM Karlsruhe, with more than 100 artistic positions and a lengthy artist-in-residence programme. TGC is not meant to provide a survey of contemporary art as a Biennale would do, and even less an “inventory” of today’s artistic production, sorted along regional or any other guidelines; it is a discursive show on the multi-level interplay of the arts scene with current economy and society. Interplay meaning that artistic production within an environment determined by the processes of Globalisation will inevitably also be influenced by these processes, may they be the dissolution of regional borders or intensifying economic circumstances; interplay meaning, also, that artists take up these topic as the content and cause of their practice. As a co-curator, I am responsible for quite a few of the things to be found in the exhibition space, and the accompanying brochure.

Global Studies. Mapping Contemporary Art and Culture

Jacob — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:00:23 +0000

The research project “Global Art and the Museum” has been running since 2006; I joined in 2009, and the first project I was (then still marginally) involved in was the “Contemporary Art and the Global Age” seminar and conference. In 2010, I co-organized “Global Studies“, a conference for PhD students working on art in the global context. More than twenty Essays from those who we had invited for the two events eventually became the book titled Global Studies. Mapping Contemporary Art and Culture; the third volume in a series of the research project’s publications. Edited, and with an introduction by me.

Julian Fickler “The Sun Smells Loud” at Kunstraum: Morgenstraße

Jacob — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:00:46 +0000

In June 2010, our first “five in a row” started with a show by Julian Fickler; now, a year later, Julian is back with new works. While last year’s paintings were expressive, gaudy pieces in oil, Julian’s new works are muted, seemingly introspective, produced with watercolour on cloth, with the shapes of supplemental stretcher bars subtly poking through the cloth from behind. What they share is Julian’s commitment to the painterly experiment, to the expressive or constructive treatment of the panel.

[Show as slideshow]

Axel Philipp’s Cars

Jacob — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:00:22 +0000

We showed Axel Philipp’s sandpaper drawings in 2010′s “Come As You Are” show; now, a very different of his works – S KY 2000 – is part of the “Car Culture” exhibition at the ZKM, and I had the pleasure to write the text for the catalogue. The object itself – a vintage Mercedes cabriolet filled to the brim with oil – is conceptually as minimalist as it gets, but evokes a very quiet kind of visual magic through the infinite reflecting depth of the black fluid (also, metaphors abound). A second work by Axel could unfortunately not be included in the exhibition, but can be seen on the website along with my text.

five in a row III

Jacob — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 19:00:28 +0000

About one year after the first one, we held a third five in a row at the Kunstraum: Morgenstraße. The evening opened with a performance by Felix Grünschloß, who had invited five Zen students to hold a meditation session in the Kunstraum. With their faces towards the gallery wall, the Buddhists were on one hand subjected to the gaze of the visitors, and on the other hand somehow protected from the “spectacle” of the art show opening on which they had turned their back on. For the next show under the title “you are invited”, we asked three artists from the Art Academy to not only show a work of their own, but to also invite one more artist each – the resulting “group show” covered all possible genres from painting to a very ephemeral site-specific performance/installation. At nine, we had a introspective installation and drawings by Sebastian Winkler, which was followed by a show of five photographs by Frederik Busch – portraits of bouncers, larger than life and uncannily corresponding with the evening’s first event. The final show was a performance and installation by Nele Gräber & Julia Sinner, which in the end dissolved into a quite nutritious social sculpture.

[Show as slideshow]

Werders Wohnzimmer

Jacob — Sat, 14 May 2011 20:00:01 +0000

My old piece Fear of Machines was shown during a small arts festival in the neighbourhood. The concept was to present art inside peoples’ living rooms – in my case, in the flat I’m living in myself – and was a rather interesting, albeit exhausting experience (I have gained quite some respect for the job of a museum guard).

Opening “Von Ast zu Ast”

Jacob — Thu, 05 May 2011 19:00:04 +0000

Sebastian Tröger, who had shown twice at Kunstraum: Morgenstraße, invited me to hold an opening speech for an exhibition he and Daniel Kiss had curated in Nürnberg with several academy students from Karlsruhe. As it was a fine exhibition, I did not have to talk about the art, and thus tried to elaborate on the notion of the “Ausstellung” [Exhibition] and if the word “scene” would not be more fitting in the context of contemporary art.

“Es gibt keinen sicheren Ort, nirgends”

Jacob — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:00:42 +0000

The corresponding exhibition to “Touching the Void” opened one day later in Mannheim – here, we showed works by eight artists which in one way or the other dealt with the image as a space, and the transfers and transgressions between dimensions. Gregor Gleiwitz‘ and Enrico Bach’s oil paintings created space within – or beyond? – the canvas; Markus Zimmermann‘s objects where takes on both the minimalist tradition and a negative construction of space, while Chul-Hyun Ahn merges minimal aesthetics with the illusionist approach of op-art. Matt Calderwood and Annabel Lange take on the white cube itself with poetic and humorous twists, and Joe Merrell presents us with the city as a graphic, while simultaneously supercharging both the temporal and three-dimensional experience of a nightly promenade. Finally, the piece by Andreas Lorenschat shows us that the creation of an imaginary space cannot solely rely on objects, but also on words, and memories.

[Show as slideshow]

“Touching the Void”

Jacob — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 19:00:42 +0000

For 2010/11, the Kunstbüro Baden-Württemberg (a state foundation for the arts) has set up an interesting exchange programme for regional art spaces – over a dozen artist initiatives and independent exhibition spaces have been invited to choose a partner and produce a show in their space – with friendly support from the Kunstbüro. While the Kunstraum: Morgenstraße was visited by the great people from CoCAO in March, our partner was zeitraumexit in Mannheim, were we realized a exhibition on the spatiality of images. The show in Mannheim had a counterpart in Karlsruhe, where we juxtaposed works by Enrico Bach and Dennis Feddersen; Enrico’s paintings, which evoke a both painterly and illusionist spatiality within the boundaries of the canvas, stand in contrast to the installation by Dennis – a three-dimensional snapshot of matter breaking and expanding, which, with its black shapes and lines, might just as well be a spatial rendition of weird scientific diagram.

(Street Spirit)

Jacob — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 21:15:12 +0000