Fall program 2019

KW Institute for Contemporary Art is pleased to announce its final season of the year, which is guided by the work of American artist Christina Ramberg. Operating under the influences of Surrealism, KW continues its investigation on the understanding of time and the body as an environment in traction with representations of time, narrative, and gender politics.
 

Pause: Every Ocean Hughes
Help the Dead
(After Ian White)
August 24–25, 2019
Curator: Mason Leaver-Yap

Stockholm-based artist Every Ocean Hughes presents Help the Dead—a new live art project that addresses self-determination, accountability, and the fantasy of continuity. Part concert, part theatre, Help the Dead draws inspiration from a series of workshops the artist attended in the last two years, where Every Ocean Hughes was learning how to be a death doula, care for dead bodies, and perform home funerals. Help the Dead is performed by Geo Wyeth and Colin Self, and marks the final installment of a three-part Pause series dedicated to artist and performer Ian White (1971–2013). White’s work responded critically to the role institutional infrastructures play in the production of art. 

The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue
September 14, 2019–January 5, 2020
Curator: Anna Gritz
Alexandra Bircken, Sara Deraedt, Gaylen Gerber, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Konrad Klapheck, Ghislaine Leung, Hans-Christian Lotz, Senga Nengudi, Ana Pellicer, Christina Ramberg, Richard Rezac, Diane Simpson, Terre Thaemlitz, Kathleen White

“Containing, restraining, reforming, hurting, compressing, binding, transforming a lumpy shape into a clean smooth line,” is how American artist Christina Ramberg (1946–95) once described the drawings of corsets in her sketchbooks. Ramberg was one of the most intriguing painters to emerge within a generation of Chicago Imagists. She left a significant body of comic, formally elegant, erotically sinister paintings. Her cropped torsi, sharply delineated and bound in bizarre variations explore the body in traction with its environment, which is shaped by corsets, hairdos as well as behavioral conventions. The core of the exhibition at KW form a selection of paintings and drawings by Ramberg alongside of which other artistic positions extend the understanding of the type of framing devices that can be identified as having an impact on and condition performance, behavior, and physical expression. The exhibition will be accompanied by a substantial publication.

The Making of Husbands is produced by KW in collaboration with 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine, Metz (France) and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (UK), where it will be presented in 2020.
 

Hreinn Friðfinnsson
To Catch a Fish with a Song: 1964–Today
September 28, 2019–January 5, 2020
Curators: Krist Gruijthuijsen, Andrea Bellini

As one of Iceland’s leading artists, Hreinn Friðfinnsson (born in 1943, Bær Dölum, Iceland) is celebrated for his inspirational and poetic use of everyday objects. His vocabulary, underscored by a delicate sense of humour, playfully implements storytelling and perceptual ploys. Friðfinnsson’s work could be characterized as conceptual; it investigates our understanding of time and the world around us. He is truly a natural storyteller; hence most of his works often ask for a narrative, or the fabrication of a story, even if there isn’t one. With subtle gestures, Friðfinnsson uses the exhibition space as a stage upon which to transform time, space, objects, the rational, and the irrational into captivating yet humble miracles.

The exhibition honors Friðfinnsson’s extraordinary practice with a comprehensive retrospective spanning over half a century of work. To Catch a Fish with a Song: 1964–Today is organized in partnership with Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (May 24 – August 25, 2019). A catalogue raisonné accompanies the exhibition. 

STATISTA
September 11–16, 2019
Curators: Tirdad Zolghadr (KW), Harry Sachs, Matthias Einhoff, Philip Horst (ZK/U)

Within the vast empty spaces of the Haus der Statistik near Alexanderplatz in Berlin-Mitte, a collaboration between ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics and KW entitled STATISTA tests whether working in the spirit of the Commons is an option even within today’s context of city development. The results of these artistic working processes will be made publicly visible during the STATISTA presentation week in September, including a crypto currency based on the well-being of bee populations, ecologically inclusive facade designs, interfaces for neighborhood participation and an international conference. Partners include, among others, Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise, Economic Space Agency, ExRotaprint, Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, KUNSTrePUBLIK, Labor k3000, Nachbarschaftsakademie Prinzessinnengärten, openBerlin, raumlaborberlin, ruangrupa. 

KW Production Series 2019: Andrea Büttner and Rachel O’Reilly
Fall 2019
Curator: Mason Leaver-Yap

For its second year of commissioning, KW Production Series engages the work by two Berlin-based artists: Andrea Büttner and Rachel O’Reilly. Already in development, these new moving image works will premiere in the fall of 2019. 

Press contact
Katja Zeidler
T +49 30 243459 41 / press@kw-berlin.de

The exhibition The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue is made possible through the support from the Capital Cultural Fund and Terra Foundation for American Art. The exhibition To Catch a Fish with a Song: 1964–Today by Hreinn Friðfinnsson is supported by the Mondriaan Fonds. Pause takes places in collaboration with curator Kirsty Bell and the Estate of Ian White, Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art as well as DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. STATISTA is funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin. KW Production Series is organized in collaboration with the JULIA STOSCHEK FOUNDATION and OUTSET Germany_Switzerland. 

KW Institute for Contemporary Art is institutionally supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin.