Denisa Lehocká & Boris Ondreička Try to describe the colour of pure (still) water, my dear. Curated by Anja Casser and Daniel Pies Badischer Kunstverein is delighted to present the first comprehensive presentation of works by Slovak artists Denisa Lehocká and Boris Ondreička in Germany. “Try to describe the colour of pure (still) water, my dear” introduces two highly divergent artistic positions and confronts the material-based approach of Denisa Lehocká with the language- and sound-based strategies of Boris Ondreička. Grounded in an everyday practice of drawing, Denisa Lehocká develops and extends the traditional vocabulary of sculpture in complex installations. She translates the world of things into a system of spatial relations that seem to hold the individual elements of each constellation in suspension along the threshold between the becoming and disintegration of formal definitions. At the same time, Lehocká’s situative arrangements act as the physical traces of a continuous process of personal notation, of individual networks of material memory and speculation. In contrast to Lehocká’s material- and process-based approach, Boris Ondreička pursues a strategy of postproduction which positions his works along the borderlines between language, sound, and visuality. Specific materials are regarded by Ondreička as only one among numerous options for realizing his concepts and ideas. His is a conceptual politics and poetry of intervention which—in its directness and immediacy—stands indisputably in the tradition of Punk, but whose concentrated dispersal of resources and systems of references just as clearly invokes the musical and literary legacies of Pop. Denisa Lehocká (b. 1971 in Trenčín) and Boris Ondreička (b. 1969 in Zlaté Moravce) live and work in Bratislava. Atrium Hamlet Hovsepian Head, Itch, Washing Hair, Yawning, Biting Nails Curated by Anja Casser and Daniel Pies Badischer Kunstverein is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Armenian artist Hamlet Hovsepian in the German-speaking world. Born in 1950 in Ashnak near Yerevan, Hovsepian numbers among the most interesting pioneers of Conceptual Art in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The presentation at Badischer Kunstverein focuses on Hamlet Hovsepian’s filmic works from the mid-1970s, which—despite the artist’s geographic isolation—display astonishing parallels with developments in the West, for instance the films of Bas Jan Ader and Vito Acconci, or Andy Warhol’s “Screen Tests.” Hovsepian’s works seem to occupy a state of suspension: on the one hand, they adhere insistently to the naked, documentary gaze of early ethnographic film. On the other, they open up the potential of an allegorical vision which not only inscribes the observed gestures and actions into the registry of a condition humaine in the spirit of Samuel Beckett, but assume a concretely political dimension as well: as a revolt against the pervasive ideologization of everyday life in the Soviet Union, and as an attempt to wrest a degree of existential freedom from this system. Hamlet Hovsepian (b. 1950 in Ashnak) lives and works in Ashnak, Armenia. In cooperation with the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna. Supported by the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts, Baden-Württemberg. TALKS & EVENTS Wednesday, 9 November, 7 pm Talk Georg Schöllhammer: Weak Inflection. West Village, ArSSR. On Hamlet Hovsepian’s films, actions and sculptural arrangements from the 1970s Friday, 11 November, 8.30 pm Lecture/Performance Boris Ondreička: The Anatomy of Melancholy Wednesday, 16 November, 7 pm Talk Ruth Noack: Who’s afraid of Denisa Lehocká? Saturday, 26 November, 8.30 pm Concert Kammerflimmer Kollektief Release concert of their new album Teufelskamin