29 Aug 2018

Opening Follow Fluxus 2018 / Assaf Gruber

Follow Fluxus 2018
Assaf Gruber /
The Conspicuous Parts

31st of August 2018 until 26th of May 2019
Opening: 30th of August 2018, from 6 pm

Assaf Gruber (*1980, Jerusalem), the eleventh scholar recipient of the Follow Fluxus - After Fluxus scholarship, called by the state capital of Wiesbaden and the Nassauischer Kunstverein, is showing his film installation The Conspicuous Parts from 31th of August 2018. In his same-named solo exhibition the award-winning filmmaker and sculptor is focusing on heterogeneous mechanisms in the background of institutional exhibitions.

Gruber's work investigates how individual ideologies are shaped by personal biographies and how these affect social relationships within private and public spheres. The film entitled The Conspicuous Parts (2018) tells a fictional story about two women working in the Natural History Museum of Berlin and examines political aspects of the representation of objects inside the museum corridors. A German taxidermist, accidentally encounters a British author who is researching facts for her new novel about an obscure expedition
to a Cuban coral reef in GDR times, in the museums archive. During their chance encounter, the two women start a rather unusual communication.

Gruber's narrative expressiveness of objects is ventured with sculptures and photographic works in the second exhibition space: The photographs display Caribbean corals (that are held in the museum storage since the 1967 expedition) that the artist planted deliberately inside numerous dioramas that were built in the Natural History Museum in the 1950s (and that are inaccessible to public viewing for decades).Thus, the photographs reinforce the questions raised by the film: Which decisions lead to something being shown in a cultural institution? And what is the connection between these decisions at the relevant time? And what might have been the motives for expeditions such as the one to Cuba in the 1960s?

The sculptures that are spread over the exhibition space tackle with humour these mysteries from another angle: They playfully adapt abstract natural forms: The actual functions of the wooden recorders, which are reminiscent of snakes, swans or plants, or of the plastic bowling balls deformed into huge eggs have been removed by the artist.

In their new forms they fail to fulfil their symbolic meaning, the transmission of sound and melody, hence information in the case of the recorders – or a violent game tool, hence ammunition, in the case of the balls. Like his films, they create a multi-layered space of meaning.


About the artist /

Assaf Gruber (*1980, Jerusalem) lives and works in Berlin.He studied fine arts at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK) in Ghent. In 2018 he received awards and scholarships,including The Camargo Foundation Award FIDLAb Marseille, the Publication Scholarship of the Berlin Senate and the Kunstfond Bonn among others. His work has been shown
at film festivals including the Berlinale and in a variety of group and solo exhibitions,most recently, at the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw and the Berlinische Galerie.


Informations about the scholarship/

Since 2008 Follow Fluxus – After Fluxus supports young international artists whose work suggests ideas inherent to the Fluxus art movement in order to further develop the movement. The endowment of 10,000 Euro is provided annually for a residency in Wiesbaden from June 2018 through August 2018. The work stipend concludes with an exhibition of the artist's created work in the same year between August 2018 and May 2019 and includes a publication.
The jury of five persons consisted of Christina Lehnert (Curator Portikus, Städelschule - Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Frankfurt / Main), Bazon Brock (Founder of Denkerei / Amt für Arbeit an unlösbaren Problemen und Maßnahmen der hohen Hand in Berlin and Emeritus Professor for aethetics and cultural mediation, Bergische Universität Wuppertal), Michael Berger
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(Collection Berger, Wiesbaden), Dr. Isolde Schmidt (Cultural Department of the city of Wiesbaden) and Elke Gruhn (Chairwoman, Artistic Director and Curator,
Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden). Assaf Gruber was proposed by Jarosław Lubiak, Artistic Director of the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warschau, for the grant.

The previous awardees of the scholarship Follow Fluxus were Emily Wardill (United Kingdom), Jimmy Robert (Guadeloupe), Aslı Sungu (Turkey), Kateřina Šedá (Czech Republic), Stefan Burger (Switzerland), Annette Krauss


(Netherlands), Taro Izumi (Japan), Mehreen Murtaza (Pakistan), Adriana Lara (Mexico) and Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann (Germany).
The scholarship is made possible by the Kulturamt Wiesbaden.
Pressrelease, August 2018 (Page 3 of 6)

We appreciate your interest. For further information and press pictures please contact us via telephone or e-mail.

Press contact / Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden
phone: +49 (0)611 30 11 36 / presse@kunstverein-wiesbaden.de