OWEN LAND and FOR THE USE OF THOSE WHO SEE
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststr. 69
10117 Berlin
Germany
OWEN LAND
How can you believe anything he says?!
FOR THE USE OF THOSE WHO SEE
Alphonse Allais, John Baldessari, Harun Farocki, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfredo Jaar, Sean Snyder, Nedko Solakov, Javier Téllez, Luc Tuymans, David Zink Yi
November 22, 2009 – January 24, 2010
Tue – Sun noon – 7 pm, Thur noon – 9 pm
Opening: November 21, 2009, 5 – 10 pm
Press Preview: November 20, 2009, 11 am
OWEN LAND
How can you believe anything he says?!
German Interviewer: What is the New American Cinema? Owen Land: Well, it’s not really new, it’s not entirely American and it’s not exactly Cinema. Thus the final words of one of the episodes in Dialogues (2007-09), the most recent work by American artist Owen Land. The two main characters are both Owen Land himself: the visual and the literary Owen Land skillfully disputing with one another. Cinematically these dialogues are mirrored by the ways in which the images, the music and the language compete, overlap and intertwine. Mythology, theology and philosophy as well as pornography, art and cultural criticism are all made to clash in Owen Land’s simple settings. Rooted in the structural film genre, different episodes conceptually string together in a trash aesthetic that’s beyond the New American Cinema.
The exhibition How can you believe anything he says?! is Owen Land’s first solo exhibition in Germany. The presented works are: Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc. (1965-66), No Sir, Orison! (1975), New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops (1976), Undesirables (Excerpts from a Work in Progress) (1999) and Dialogues (2007-09).
FOR THE USE OF THOSE WHO SEE
Alphonse Allais, John Baldessari, Harun Farocki, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfredo Jaar, Sean Snyder, Nedko Solakov, Javier Téllez, Luc Tuymans, David Zink Yi
One hand holds an hourglass. The other holds a thermometer. The grains of sand fall as the temperature rises. Time/Temperature (1972-73) is a work by John Baldessari that makes time and temperature visible, solely through the use of measuring equipment. The work exposes and draws attention to the paradox inherent to this process, namely the impossibility of visualizing these non-visible parameters.
The exhibition FOR THE USE OF THOSE WHO SEE presents a somewhat experimental arrangement of works that reveal the boundaries of the visual and display a firm belief in the image. The difference between mimesis and reality—inherent to every work of art—is foregrounded in the picture itself. The risk of failing at this point is deeply embedded in the consciousness of these works and yet is also convincingly depicted.
With kind support by the Ernst Schering Foundation and the Capital Cultural Fund, Berlin.
Further information:
Denhart v. Harling . T +49. 30. 243459. 42 . press@kw-berlin.de