Cyprien Gaillard presented by DAAD’s Berliner Kunstlerprogramm

Cyprien Gaillard
Neon Indian
17 July–11 December 2011

Haus der Statistik
Otto-Braun-Str./ Karl-Marx-Allee 10178 Berlin
Berliner Künstlerprogramm/ DAAD
www.berliner-kuenstlerprogramm.de
www.daadgalerie.de

Cyprien Gaillard’s art refers to precarious, urban situations that record and formulate the contradictions of our post-industrial society architecturally. The dislocation and relocation of the monument are central to his work, which switches back and forth between ancient and modern, as it explores the conservation, reconstruction and destruction of the urban landscape.

As a project of the DAAD’s Berliner Künstlerprogramm in collaboration with based in Berlin, a monumental 1950s bar style neon on top of the Haus der Statistik at Alexanderplatz will compete with the surrounding advertisement. Neon Indian renders a version of the familiar logo of the US baseball team Cleveland Indians—a Native American cartoon caricature. Gaillard’s frequent use of the logo in his work points at the paradox of US sports club’s adoption of American Indian team names and mascots, irrespective of the country’s destruction of its indigenous peoples. Gaillard is interested in how such ancient symbols live on in marketing and mass culture, how what is “out of time” continues to exist. Likewise, the soon to be demolished Plattenbau ruin of Haus der Statistik reveals the folly of urban planning in an ever-changing historical context. On its roof, the displaced “face of the city of Cleveland”—a silent witness to the formerly rich industrial metropoles’ downfall, a city scarred by modern ruins today—smiles back knowingly at Berlin’s skyline.

Cyprien Gaillard (born 1980 in Paris) lives and works in Paris and Berlin. Solo exhibitions include: Centre Pompidou, Paris and The Recovery of Discovery, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011); Obstacles to Renewal, Kunsthalle Basel, Geographical Analogies, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt a. M., and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington (2010); Selected group exhibitions include Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, The Original Copy: Photography from 1836 to Today, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gwangju Biennial, and Aichi Triennial, Nagoya (2010). In 2009 Gaillard was a guest of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm/ DAAD. Gaillard is winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize 2010 and is nominated for the Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art 2011 in Berlin.

Kindly supported by the Institut français

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