Lili Reynaud Dewar: Teeth, Gums, Machines, Future, Society / Christoph Meier: C & O / Studio Miessen: 11 Directors & 7 Convulsions Later

Lili Reynaud Dewar​
Teeth, Gums, Machines, Future, Society

In May 2016, after a few preliminary trips to the city, Lili Reynaud Dewar (*1975 in Larochelle, France, lives and works in Grenoble) returned to Memphis, Tennessee. There, she gathered a group of four local stand-up comedians (Jada Brisentine, Darius Clayton, Henry Coleman and Brandon Sams), and introduced them to a long-time collaborator (noise musician Hendrik Hegray) and one of her students (Ashley Cook).

Together, they engaged in conversations about teeth, the body in contemporary culture, the “Cyborg Manifesto” written three decades earlier by Donna Haraway, the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike that preceded Martin Luther King’s assassination, the past and the present, the value of humor and comedy. A set of gold grills—cult objects in rap culture—were custom-made for each performer, and served as a common denominator to their encounters, which culminated in a final performance held on May 31 in a futuristic-looking building of Memphis: The Levitt Shell.

The resulting film, Teeth Gums Machines Future Society, is the core of Lili Reynaud Dewar’s exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg. In an installation that pushes against the boundaries of its physical space, she brings together elements of rap culture and science fiction, props and remains from the performance as well as new objects that enlarge and distort the original experience. In this space that both reiterates and commemorates the performance held in Memphis, the artist discusses immediate subjects of the articulation and translation of cultural identities, their conditions, consequences and limits.

The exhibition is a co-production with the Museion in Bozen and de Vleeshal Middleburg and is accompanied by a publication. Teeth Gums Machines Future Society will be performed at Theatre des Amandiers in Nanterre and Moma PS1 in New York.
 

Christoph Meier​
C & O

“Even if muses and models have long left the studio, the coffee has become bitterly cold, and the phone is ringing all so smartly, artists will not yet say that they’ve arrived in the office.”
–Jakob Neulinger, on the occasion of an exhibition by Christoph Meier

Indeed, what is the state of the artist today? Why is the exhibition space still needed, and what is actually happening there? In his first institutional solo show in Germany, Christoph Meier (*1980 in Vienna, lives and works in Vienna) examines the space as a site of social interaction and interrogates the conditions of contemporary art production and presentation. The audience becomes part of a architectural structure that challenges the viewer to contemplate the Kunstverein as a place of assertion and speculation. The installation will be completed by wall pieces and sculptures that transfer the subject of the exhibition-making to the object and its placement in the space. Christoph Meier’s works are assertions that expose, recall and question themselves.

On the occasion of the exhibition a monograph will appear with Mousse Publishing, which is coproduced with KIOSK, Ghent and the Casino Luxembourg. With the kind support of the Ministry of Culture of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the Austrian Federal Chancellery and the Austrian Culture Forum, Berlin.

Studio Miessen​
11 Directors & 7 Convulsions Later

Studio Miessen opens the entrance area of the Kunstverein and resolves the historic separation between foyer and exhibition space. By this architectural reformulation, the ground floor of the Kunstverein becomes a place of mediation between urban reality and artistic discourse.

With the kind support by the Hermann Reemtsma Foundation, of the Ministry of Culture of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the Federal Environment Ministry, Farrow & Ball Hamburg, Dornbracht and Geberit.

Press contact: presse [​at​] kunstverein.de / T +49 40 322158