Kaucyila Brooke
Do You Want Me To Draw You A Diagram?
20 April–17 June 2012
Opening:
19 April 2012, 7pm
Atrium
Ruth Ewan
Music Without Masters
30 March–17 June 2012
Badischer Kunstverein
Waldstraße 3
76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
Kaucyila Brooke
Do You Want Me To Draw You A Diagram?
20 April–17 June 2012
Badischer Kunstverein is pleased to present American artist Kaucyila Brooke with her first comprehensive solo exhibition in Germany. The selection ranges from early works from the 1980s to new works that Brooke has conceived especially for this exhibition. Brooke’s central medium is photography, which she also uses in collages of text and images. She also works with installations, drawings, and videos.
Kaucyila Brooke’s work is concerned with the mechanisms of power and representation and asks what possibilities exist for the individual to interrupt the dominant cultural codes. In a group of works from the 1980s and 90s, the determining principle is a montage of photos and text juxtaposing the patterns of traditional historiography with a formal language from popular and media culture, as in the expansive photo collage Tit for Twat (1993, ongoing). Stylistically, these panels of images and text take their lead from the narrative strategies of popular photo novellas and early cartoon strips. At the same time, it reveals the influence of film and media theories that have shaped the artist’s work, as have feminist and queer theories and analyses of biology and gender based on cultural theory. Brooke has conceived nine new panels for Tit for Twat that are being premiered at Badischer Kunstverein.
A second group of works is dedicated to photographic series and addresses issues of documentation and archiving. Brooke employs the format of the photographic document as an open form that incorporates rifts, voids, and omissions and questions the boundaries of a conventional transmission of knowledge. For Kathy Acker’s Clothes (1999–2004), Brooke photographed 154 different pieces of clothing that belonged to the American writer, who died in 1997. They capture the author’s succinct style and her mise-en-scène of her sexual identity. The photo series Family Group, After Morandi and After GLH (2012), conceived especially for this exhibition, similarily runs through the possibilities of a private matter in absence of the subject. The artist’s own collection of vases is staged as still lifes in the style of the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi and presented in different arrangements.
In the Kunstverein’s so-called Waldstrassensaal, a selection from the artist’s working archive is being presented for the first time. In a series of drawings titled Do You Want Me to Draw You a Diagram? (2004–2006), the artist playfully analyzes the thematic and formal connections between her works. These diagrams delineate the architectural structure of the projects and the code to access the archive and artistic practice of Kaucyila Brooke.
Kaucyila Brooke (b. 1952) lives in Los Angeles.
Atrium
Ruth Ewan
Music Without Masters
30 March–17 June 2012
Until 17 June, Scottish artist Ruth Ewan presents a solo exhibition in the Atrium of the Kunstverein. The exhibition brings together various projects centred around the work “A Jukebox of People Trying to Change the World,” an archive of approximately 1,500 progressive, utopian, and protest songs. Ewan is exhibiting a revised version of the jukebox, in which she has added a selection of German songs interpreted by local singers and music groups.
Ruth Ewan (b. 1980) lives and works in London.
The exhibition is part of the 21st European Culture Days Karlsruhe 2012.
TALKS & EVENTS
Tuesday, 17 April, 7pm
Artist talk
Kaucyila Brooke
In cooperation with State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe,
Friday, 4 May, 8.30pm
Concert/Performance
Crazy Bitch in a Cave (comfortzone, Vienna)
Thursday, 31 May, 7pm
Artist talk and book launch
with Ruth Ewan
Wednesday, 13 June, 7pm
Film screening
Dry Kisses Only (Kaucyila Brooke and Jane Cottis, 1990, video, 75′)
