07 Mar 2013

Eva Kotátková and Almut Linde at Kunstverein Braunschweig

Haus Salve Hospes
EVA KOTÁTKOVÁ
THEATRE OF SPEAKING OBJECTS

March 9–May 12, 2013
Opening: March 8, 7 pm

With Theatre of Speaking Objects, the Kunstverein Braunschweig is presenting the first institutional solo exhibition of works by Eva Koťátková in Germany. In recent years, the Czech artist (*1982 in Prague) has created an extensive and internationally acclaimed oeuvre ranging from sculptures, installations, and performances to numerous fine drawings and collages that are reminiscent of works by the postwar avant-garde. She has produced a number of new works for the Kunstverein that are in part performative and deal with verbal and non-verbal communication.

Eva Koťátková's works for the most part critically examine concepts of upbringing and education. Schools, offices, or retirement homes often serve as metaphors for human experiences, such as the loss of control, oppression, the pressure to achieve, or exclusion. With her installations composed of seemingly surreal collages, spatial structures, and so-called education machines she reveals regimented aspects and constraints of social coexistence in an exaggerated way, however without pursuing informative goals.
The points of departure of her works are often books on educational science and psychology from the 1920s to the 1990s. In the collages in the series Work of Nature (2012), for instance, she combines illustrations of people, animals, and plants with cage-like constructions that constrict them in their natural environment yet at the same time provide protection. Here, Koťátková inquires in bewilderment into people's reasons for sometimes voluntarily allowing themselves to be restricted or conforming. The collages are supplemented by metal constructions that could serve, so to speak, as instruments of torture or orthopedic machines. The installation Theatre of Speaking Objects (2012) in the hall of mirrors of the Kunstverein consists of 13 seemingly everyday and at once strange objects. They tell stories that deal with individual problems within social structures. In their combination, Koťátková's works at the Villa Salve Hospes create a stage-like setting that also makes palpable the absurd, dismal influences of writers such as Franz Kafka or Samuel Beckett.

Eva Koťátková studied in Prague, Vienna and San Francisco and in recent years has participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including the Sydney Biennale 2012 and the Lyon Biennale 2011.




Remise
ALMUT LINDE
RADICAL BEAUTY: FORM/MOVEMENT

March 9–May 12, 2013
Opening: March 8, 7 pm

The exhibition Radical Beauty: Form/Movementin the Remise of the Kunstverein Braunschweig is part of an international cooperation project that throws light on the extensive oeuvre of the Hamburg-based artist Almut Linde (*1965 in Lübeck) from different perspectives in a total of six exhibitions. The show in Braunschweig presents new and older sculptures, films, and photographs.

'My studio is the world,' says Almut Linde. She works with people and social systems instead of with a brush and canvas. In doing so, the artist places herself in areas in which one would hardly suspect artistic potential, such as sites of industrial production, a traveling circus, military maneuvers, or the entertainment industry. However, it is not Almut Linde's aim to merely document what occurs. In her works she deliberately employs techniques from, for instance, Conceptual Art, Minimal Art, and Action Painting in order to direct attention to the blind spots of perception.

In the 1990s, the Conceptual artist, photographer, and sculptor developed her own interpretation of Minimal Art, which she calls Dirty Minimal, which shifts the focus of her investigations to the everyday and the overlooked. She combines forms of Minimal Art with sociopolitical contents and allusions to romantic visual conceptions. The question of form, the image, and the underlying movement is essential: in Dirty Minimal #33.2—Bullet Actionpainting/Machine Gun, for example, she lined up glass frames during an army firing exercise and had the soldiers shoot at them, creating abstract works. Chance also plays a large role: even objects carelessly thrown on top of one another can be assigned meaning. In the exhibition, simple sheets of Styrofoam are used to fashion a white iceberg, trophies won at a fair and randomly assembled in a glass display case begin to correspond with one another. Linde is convinced that form can emerge directly out of movement in the social system in the same way form emerges directly out of movement in works such as Dirty Minimal #61.8—Eismeer/Sea of Ice and Dirty Minimal #46.1—Random Constellations.

Under the aegis of Oliver Zybok, an extensive catalogue has been published by Hatje Cantz and the participating institutions (Galerie der Stadt Remscheid, Overbeck Gesellschaft in Lübeck, DA2 – Domus Artium in Salamanca, Chapter in Cardiff, Kunstpalais Erlangen, as well as the Kunstverein Braunschweig) with contributions by Oliver Zybok, Martin Eisenman, and Raimar Stange.