Matthew Buckingham
Everything has a Name
8 June-19 August 2007
Opening: Thursday 7 June 2007, 7pm
Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin
An Exhibition by the Artists-in-Berlin Programme of the DAAD in collaboration with the National Gallery in the Hamburger Bahnhof
Matthew Buckinghams work is devoted to the historical enquiry into names and their origin. His film, Muhheakantuck Everything has a name, investigates the question how the Hudson River acquired its name. Filmed from a helicopter following the riverbank from Manhattan to Beacon, the films added voice-track recounts the story of the Hudson. Images, texts and biographies are simultaneously the subject-matter of Matthew Buckinghams work and the means by which it achieves its form.
This is also the case in his latest work Everything I need, dedicated to the biography of Charlotte Wolf, a Jewish doctor and psychologist. Wolf emigrated from Berlin, worked in Paris and London and finally, in August 1978, returned to Berlin. By superimposing texts upon images of the empty interior of a 70s-style passenger aeroplane, Matthew Buckingham in this work comments on the different stages of Charlotte Wolfs life.
Finally, his third large video-work, which was made in 2006 for the Liverpool Biennale, deals with Herman Melvilles Moby Dick. This film, entitled Obscure Moorings, is shown in a wave-like cinema construction.
The voyage theme, as the telling of historical facts using symbolic images, is discernable as the leitmotiv of Matthew Buckinghams work. Thus, the exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof leads the viewer to different places and sites in cities and landscapes. The knowledge of what lies behind a name corresponds to images that in a two-fold way suggest the theme of voyage: as a journey to these various places and as a point from which to enter the story of our culture.
Matthew Buckingham was born in Nevada, Iowa in 1963. He lives and works in New York. He has participated with his film works in international group exhibitions since the late 1990s. Comprehensive solo exhibitions have taken place in the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna in 2003 and in the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster in 2005. Until 1 July 2007, Matthew Buckinghams most recent work can be viewed in his solo exhibition Play the Story at the Camden Arts Centre London.
Opening Hours: Tue-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 11am-8pm. Sun 11am-6pm
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artpress Ute Weingarten
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