Penultimate

Nathan Baker, Christina Fischer, Dana Engfer, Marie Greffrath, Gwendolyn Kerber, Eric Legris, Alexandra Schumacher and Julian Weber

May 13 - June 18, 2011

Schalter is pleased to announce Penultimate, a group exhibition featuring photography, sculpture, installation, drawing, montage and painting. All the artists participating in Penultimate currently live in Berlin; however they originate from locations across Europe and the United States and represent a broad spectrum of backgrounds and aesthetics.

Penultimate is a conversation. All of the work, or near to it, has been installed on one wall. Penultimate takes place between the installation of the exhibition and the individual pieces that compose it, amongst the pieces themselves, and finally, within an awareness of Schalter itself and opportunities and risks afforded by its model of existence. It should be fun.

LIZ by Lina

Liz Nielsen

February 18 – March 26, 2011

Schalter is pleased to present LIZ by Lina, a photographic installation highlighting constellations of thought.

Curatorial Statement:

Between our sky and the Earth lives a universe of light frequencies calmly captured by an alien eye. A typical viewer often doesn’t tap into this formula because the flashes of reality are too commonplace for bystanders without the lens, shutter, and extra-terrestrial sight. She’s perched on this planet, never wasting a moment, harnessing light as it finally reaches us after travelling vast distances. Time is too linear of a concept for Liz Nielsen; it’s inside of one dimension. She works with a time travelers’ vision collapsing non-linear histories and capturing multi-dimensional space.

Liz is caught here, recording her play land. An impulsive notion snaps images with an almost logic resulting in a prolific archive of chromogenic prints. Organizing them is a flight of an imagination for the energy between the works is the unifying force, not time, not color, not shape, nor form. Whether manipulating her subjects with flash and fill techniques or falling in love with the mystical in an ordinary object, Liz seizes the light. These documented spaces are snatched and presented. They are arresting the moment and planning for the future, which, in her mind was now and yesterday.

Liz states that her two most basic needs in life are “Art & Love” and she wonders whether the two can truly coexist. In this show, LIZ by Lina, she has requested her lover to curate her art. Here you have a very intimate collection of work and observations. Digitally imposed geometric forms haunt the images referring to psychic space that exists outside of physical space. It is her plot between all astronomical expanses and where matter doesn’t exist. She catches and traps time hoping to propel her viewer into a different universe.                                

                                                                                                          Carolina Wheat

Liz Nielsen (American, born 1975, lives and works in Chicago, IL)

Mark Prince

November 26 - December 31, 2010

Schalter is pleased to announce a new exhibition by Berlin based English artist, Mark Prince. The exhibition will present several large paintings incorporating collaged, textual elements. Prince’s exhibition continues a long tradition of projects which have been tailored for presentation at Schalter. 

Dissonate

Evgenija Wassilew

October 15-30, 2010

Schalter is pleased to announce Dissonate, an exhibition by French-German artist Evgenija Wassilew. Wassilew’s recent projects have touched on the borders and possibilities of communication. Her work has focused on the song-compositions of small animals – voices, like foreign languages, between music and noise. The situations her works create are reminiscent of the methods of behavioral studies, often combining them with a romantic approach: making possible the improbable.

Wassilew’s installation at Schalter, Sonata for 63 Solo-Violins, transforms the body of a loudspeaker into a tropical living space for Mediterranean crickets. The speakers play back the third movement of Béla Bartók’s Solo Violin Sonata, stirring the crickets to chirp: Fuga – Risoluto, non troppo vivo. A microphone inside the speaker sends the sounds to a harmonizer, which tries to adjust the pitch of the chirps to the notes of the violin. The harmonizer succeeds or fails to various degrees, according to the temperament of the insects and the violin’s tempo. Simultaneous to this process, the tweeters of the loudspeaker play back the amplified chirps.

The second work, Melos Amoris, documents the attempt to translate a humpback whale song for domestic mice. The whale song was transposed to the ultrasonic frequency and sound volume of mice and played for a defined period in their cage. An ultrasonic microphone recorded the noises in the cage, as well as the courtship songs the mice produced while being exposed to the sounds of the whale. Ten songs were selected for an Audio CD, and returned to the range of human hearing. The accompanying booklet presents a selection of documents related to the subject. Headphones are available to listen to the CD; the printed graphics can be “read along” with the songs.

Evgenija Wassilew graduated from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (ensb-a) and received a DAAD postgraduate Scholarship for University of Arts (UdK) Berlin in 2008. Her works have been featured in exhibitions and festivals in Europe; Dissonate is her first solo exhibition in Berlin.

The artist would like to express her ongoing gratitude to Raimund Specht, Avisoft Bioacoustics, for his support and generosity.

Index

Nadine Fecht

August 27 - October 8, 2010

Schalter is pleased to announce Index, an exhibition by Berlin based artist Nadine Fecht. In connection with Nadine Fecht‘s exhibition at Schalter, the following essay was written:

The Drawing as Totem

Nadine Fecht’s work is neither representational nor abstract. Rather, they are themselves representations. Two-dimensional, drawn sculptures which incorporate all aspects of drawings such as format, paper or the tactile moment where the physical materials of the drawing are pulled into the work: The paper is thinner or thicker, smaller or larger, warped or flat. The accumulated colors and gray tones possess, beyond their light and dark shades, their own additional characteristics, for example dry, brittle, wet, thick, vibrating, dormant, transparent or nontransparent. 

In terms of content, the works speak for themselves. They picture nothing, and they reference nothing; even the conceptual slips to the background. Nadine Fecht’s pictures show nothing other than themselves. That self, however, is more than enough. They operate in the sphere of the symbolic. In its original sense, in the magical totemic meaning, the symbol is identical to what it represents. The Shaman, dressed as a bear, becomes the bear and it would be impossible to convince him that he is anything else. This identity of the symbol, with its representative aspects of reality, appears so foreign to our contemporary thought, because it belongs to a multidimensional worldview, which was sacrificed on the path to our cultural milieu.

Nadine Fecht‘s pictorial sculptures lead us into this realm of the flatly magical, and each work delivers us there in its own unique way. Every symbol speaks to something other, and therefore requires another and internal means of execution. Harmonizing the simple and the meaningful in such a way that the visible speaks to the tangible and the experienceable speaks to the feeling, is what creates the peculiar tension that confronts us here.

Or, put differently: Everyone can take what they want from Nadine Fecht’s drawings. And, despite that sounding so banal and common, brings the viewer back to a question that is anything but banal: What is then, that I want?

Eric Wunder, 2010

(Translation by Schalter)

Constellations

Ellen Rothenberg

June 25 - July 31, 2010

Schalter is pleased to announce Constellations, a new exhibition by Chicago based artist, Ellen Rothenberg. Constellations features a series of small red price tags in what now feel like seemingly improbably, if not impossibly small sums coupled with commercially fabricated signs.

The tags in Constellations range from 3 cents to the high end of $1.59 and are arranged in small groupings, or constellations, throughout the exhibition space. Blue enamel signs highlight or identify specific elements within the clusters either individually or as a group. Together they present the viewer with layered economies and specificities of value and location. Additionally, the blue signs mirror the explanatory arrows one might encounter in a planetarium, pointing at times and places that are not immediately accessible.

Rothenberg's installations and public projects often employ social movements, politics, and history to interrogate political engagement, memory and social dialog. In her projects, we find the familiar and instructive such as newspapers, protest placards or public signage reformed and rewritten, drawing our attention the assumptions that animate the world around us.

Ellen Rothenberg’s work has been presented in the US and Europe at The Institute of Contemporary Art and The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, London's Royal Festival Hall, The Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and The Kent Gallery in NYC among others. Currently her work is included in "Experimental Geography" a touring exhibition curated by Nato Thompson and Independent Curators International NYC. Rothenberg lives and works in Chicago. More information: http://www.ellenrothenberg.com.

Tomorrow, when no one is here, I will:

June 11-19, 2010

Schalter is pleased to announce Tomorrow, when no one is here, I will: The exhibition will present an installation incorporating over 1,000 post-it notes. Tomorrow, when no is here, I will: was created by Schalter founder Ryan Weber. The project is on view for one week.

Tomorrow, when no one is here, I will: presents the viewer with 1,000 post-it notes, each of which claims something that will happen on an unspecified “tomorrow” when no one is in the gallery. Each of the texts has been handwritten on canary-yellow post-it notes and pasted throughout the gallery. Not coincidentally, the opening also corresponds with both the start of the World Cup Tournament in South Africa, and the 6th Berlin Biennale. 

Like the familiar philosophical riddle, “If a tree falls in the forest, no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Tomorrow, when no on is here, I will: poses questions about the role of art and observation and continues a series of projects at Schalter, which explore and utilize the traditional boundaries and assumptions that animate notions of the gallery, exhibition, artist, and curator.

piercednightstarvoice

Mark Booth

April 9 - May 22, 2010                  

Schalter is pleased to announce piercednightstarvoice by Chicago based artist Mark Booth. The exhibition consists of three components: wall based text pieces, text drawings, and a two channel audio work. The work has been created specifically for presentation at Schalter.

Mark Booth’s spontaneously composed drawings and paintings often employ evocative fragments of narrative language and phrases such as A CATEGORY OF FLAMES SUCH AS THE CATEGORY OF TALKING FLAMES OR NON-TALKING FLAMES, or SMALL RINGING TEETH. At times, the texts have appeared in groups like speech balloons bubbling up, or as isolated idioms framed in bold colors. They are at once abstract and immediate, referring to what often feels unreal in vivid, concrete detail, and allow for error and slippage, including blackened out letters and awkward breaks of the line. The wall texts at Schalter form part of a larger series of flora and fauna pieces, obliquely exploring the subject of man and nature in hand-cut adhesive vinyl.

The audio work, In the event that the stag horn fern becomes metallic and that each of its bifurcating leaves rings like a tuning fork, is a knowingly unsatisfactory attempt to approximate a cicada song. The artist, through the use of prepared acoustic guitar and voice, attempts to emulate the droning swells of sound produced by this insect. Guitar strings were set into continuous vibration by electronic devices, and the resulting drones were interrupted and altered by various objects. These rhythms and drones are accompanied by "uvular trills", vocal sounds which are soft clicks and vibrations produced in the back of the human throat. The piece explores the desire of being what one is not, specifically one of the artist’s favorite sound-producing insects.

Throughout his practice, Booth’s work privileges the creative and play, inviting himself and his audience to experience other forms of aesthetic experience and indulging our capacity for amusement and wonder. His texts and audio similarly allow a sense of awe, implying permission through their improvisational all-inclusiveness. Within Booth’s work lies an insistent non-hierarchical gesture, offering the viewer possibility instead of interpretation and generosity instead of prescriptive readings.

Mark Booth is an audio artist, interdisciplinary artist, performer, and writer whose work is rooted in an exploration of language, sound, and the complexities of perception. He has performed and exhibited in the United States, Europe, and Scandinavia. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Booth's work is represented by Dan Devening Projects and Editions in Chicago.

Fifty-Two and a Half Degrees

Jason Mortara

January 8 - February 20, 2010               

Schalter is pleased to announce Fifty-Two and a Half Degrees, an exhibition by Boston-based artist Jason Mortara. The exhibition consists of two components: a series of large photographs, “The Building of ‘Big No. 4,’” presented within the gallery; and a video, “Dream House (Burn),” projected in the gallery’s front windows at night for the duration of the exhibition. 

Fifty-Two and a Half Degrees, as an exhibition title, introduces the viewer to a kind of looping play or pluralism often foregrounded in Mortara’s work. Here, it is left open for the viewer to decide what “degree” the title refers to: is it the cool of 52.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which would be felt standing in the space where the “Big No. 4” was built; the 52.5 of Celsius and implied warmth that might be experienced watching a house, like the one in the video, ablaze in person; or, finally, is it a degree of latitude and a reflection of location of the gallery space?

A similar toying with reference and meaning takes place in Mortara’s series of photographs, “The Building of ‘Big No. 4.’” The photographs document and depict two concurrent timelines: the nighttime construction of a large sculpture of the number 4, and the building out of a large interior space by workers during normal working hours. The construction of the number 4, is built out of the same lumber and drywall material the workers used to build the room touching on notions of labor, meaning and association, to question the desire to find (or not find) significance in a number.

“Dream House (Burn)” arose out of another sporadic series began by the artist in 2003, “The Dream House Variations.” The video, presented at night as a projection in the gallery window, shows a small house slowly going up in flames. The house’s dimensions are based on the size of the artist’s body with outstretched arms and feet, while the shape is derived from the typical child’s representation of a house — namely a block with a triangle on top — occasionally graced with a window or door.  As an image, the house is paradoxically deeply intimate as a site of personal meaning unique to each individual and yet universal and blank in its archetypal representation. 

Jason Mortara’s installation, video, live art, sculpture, drawing, painting, photography and proposals have been shown at Mission 17 Gallery, Southern Exposure, The Oakland Art Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, and others. He received his MFA in New Genres from The San Francisco Art Institute in 2004. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 2006, received a MacDowell Colony Fellowship in 2007 and attended the Atlantac Center for the Arts residency in Florida with Paul Pfeiffer. More of his work can be seen at jasonmortara.com.

Helen and Bright

Judith Karcheter and Bignia Wehrli

November 13 - December 19, 2009                

Schalter is pleased to announce Helen and Bright, an exhibition by Berlin-based artists Judith Karcheter and Bignia Wehrli. The exhibition presents an installation by Judith Karcheter as well as an object and a wall text by Bignia Wehrli. In addition to the exhibition, the artists will deliver a performance on Thursday, December 10th, at 8 pm.

Beneath the title Helen and Bright is a partly true, partly invented fictive tale that refers to a story that took place at the turn of the 19th century in England. The story is of a young lion tamer, Helen, and her beloved tiger, Bright. Judith Karcheter’s installation presents fragments and props which both animate the room and allow the narrative space to breath. The tale is further reinforced with photos, collages and a ballad-like song text that functions as a link between the associative fragments. The work is marked by an uneasy distinction slipping between discreet art object and theatrical prop. Karcheter’s work has been subject to numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany and Europe. She studied in Glasgow and Paris before receiving her Master’s degree from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).

Swiss artist Bignia Wehrli will present a wall text and an object. The work is based on twin transformations of the distance between her current home on Stettiner Straße and the apartment where she previously lived, also in Berlin’s Wedding neighborhood. The variable paths between the locations are mapped out into a font, while the length of the line is knitted into an object. Wehrli’s routes form a text that is at once illustrative and illegible, tracing the invisible into a foreign language. She received her MFA at the University of Fine Arts (HfBK) in Dresden and was awarded a DAAD scholarship to China in 2005, where she spent three years.

The work of Karcheter and Wehrli is joined by an attention to, and interest in, the imaginary or imagined. Both artists employ invented histories or improvised meditations on events or the possibilities of events as a catalyst to set the work into motion. Their work draws awareness to curiosity and foregrounds absence as a productive space to be explored and transformed in different ways. Karcheter and Wehrli met in Paris in 2004; this is the first time they have shown together. 

Points of Vues

Jofroi Amaral

September 18 - October 31, 2009

Schalter is pleased to announce POINTS OF VUES, an exhibition by Berlin-based, Belgian artist Jofroi Amaral. The exhibition will feature a group of objects that form a larger installation; it has been created by Amaral specifically for presentation at Schalter.

Rather than view the objects as a discreet series of artworks, Amaral challenges the viewer to see the work more as a set of tools or props pointing towards a larger, more encompassing experience. Often his process begins with an intense phase of reading and research, which is later distilled in a process of amalgamation or concretization, to produce the individual elements of his work. Finally, this production is brought together to form the final installation.

POINTS OF VUES follows this method to explore the connections between theoretical physics, hermetic philosophy and alchemy. His work '4 Squares', three black lacquered rectangles, is based on the proportions employed to construct Gothic cathedrals in the Middle Ages. Another piece, 'Imago Mundi', presents the viewer with what initially appears as a rendering of a sphere but reveals itself upon further inspection to be a delicate fractal drawing. Throughout POINTS OF VUES, the viewer continually find themselves confronted by their own reflection in the highly polished and industrially produced surfaces of Amaral's work.

Underlying the work is an attention to the links that animate seemingly disparate topics, drawing out and uncovering structures that may not initially be visible. As the exhibition's title suggests, POINTS OF VUES resists easy resolution into a singular or privileged interpretation, instead opting for the open-ended, inviting the viewer to form their own relationships with, and between, the works.

Jofroi Amaral is originally from Brussels. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions in Berlin and across Europe. Amaral has been living in Berlin since 2003. In addition to his studio practice, Amaral also operates his own laboratory, 'Informal Space', in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg.

DESTROY Modern Art

Maurice Doherty

June 12 - July 25, 2009

Schalter is pleased to announce D E S T R O Y M o d e r n A r t, an exhibition by Glasgow/Berlin based artist Maurice Doherty.

In his exhibition at Schalter, Doherty employs a variety of techniques – lens based, sculptural and two dimensional – to find urgency in the established methods and conventions of 20th Century Art. Treating seminal artworks as an available vocabulary to be fragmented, misappropriated, vandalized, stolen or otherwise transgressed, Doherty brings a conceptual approach – such as applying Piet Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism to the streets of Belfast or lifting fetishized images from the internet – to bear on the interplay of conflicts like morality and culture or beauty and the banal.

The theme of destruction has often featured in Doherty’s art. Having received the New Work Scotland Award in Edinburgh in 2003, Doherty’s exhibition at the Collective Gallery titled ‘Mass Destruction’ consisted of a gas cooker, canister and burning candle. The installation gave visitors to the exhibition the opportunity to turn on the gas and obliterate the gallery. In a more recent artwork, ‘Searching for My Soul’, Doherty is documenting the destruction and regeneration of the cells in his body over a sixteen-year period, at which point he will be physically made up of new matter.

Born in Ireland in 1972, Doherty graduated from the University of Ulster, Belfast, in 1997 and completed a Masters in Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art, in 2001. Recent solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Futures Gallery, Glasgow Science Centre, as part of the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art (2008), Catalyst Arts, Belfast (2006), The Floating Series, Berlin (2006) and Tramway, Glasgow (2006). Recent group shows include ‘Last Chance Salon’ at the Glasgow Project Room (2009), 'Wanted Duchamps' at D’Ailleurs-Volapük/Ici&Là, Berlin (2008) and 'Ghost Riders' at Kunsthaus Erfurt (2008).

Butter High

Benedikt Braun, Alexis Knowlton, Patrick McElnea

April 30 – June 13, 2009

Schalter is pleased to announce its new exhibition, BUTTER HIGH. The exhibition will present the work of three artists: Benedikt Braun (DE), Alexis Knowlton (US), and Patrick McElnea (US). The show features installation, sculpture, collage, painting and drawing.

Butter High began in the form of a challenge, inviting two artists to consider and work with, around, against or in relation to a preselected work of art within the small space of Schalter. The preselected work was 'Zu viel verlangt' (Asked for too much), by German artist Benedikt Braun. The presentation format's circuitous tension explores collaboration between the individual art works, the exhibition space, curation and artists.

Benedikt Braun's work employs everyday objects and events as means to explore the ethics and codes that regulate our collective reality. By highlighting and fixating on gestures as simple as saying 'Good Morning,' or stooping to pick up loose change on the sidewalk, Braun's work returns our world to us estranged and afresh. 'Zu viel verlangt', puns on desire and its consequences, extending the lines of a child's swing set to tragic length. Braun has been included in numerous group exhibitions and was recently selected to represent Weimar's Bauhaus University in the 'Ring Frei' competition at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn.

The work of Berlin-based, American artist, Alexis Knowlton intentionally bumps into genres of abstract painting. Her process relies on a sense of play and scale in the work to derive a critical tension. 'Butter High' presents the viewer with a sheet of felt that has been painted on, only to be rolled up and hung as a tube near the ceiling; a specific object with texture, color, sheen, shape and size. Here Knowlton refutes notions of closure, exemplified by the tube's pink gestural line, a line that is interrupted when the painting is flipped in on itself. Knowlton attended the Rhode Island School of Design for her BFA and Yale University School of Art for her MFA in painting. She has exhibited in New York and San Francisco.

Patrick McElnea also lives and works in Berlin, where he moved following his MFA at Yale. For Butter High, he has included a series of colored pencil drawings and one collage. The drawings are conceptually motivated, often using the history of abstract painting as a starting point. All of the work is constructed through a ritualistic gesture, which seen as a tick of the hand, focuses on the surface as both a literal and meta ground. Similarly, his collage 'Greatest Hits,' offers multiple readings depending on the viewer's proximity to the surface. McElnea also works in video.

Wald

Christopher Rose

February 27 – April 11, 2009

Schalter is pleased to announce Wald (Forest), an exhibition by New York-based artist Christopher Rose. For this exhibition, Rose has been invited to create a large wall-sized mural, painted directly on the wall of Schalter. This is Rose's second exhibition at the project space, and his first solo presentation in Berlin.

Wald continues an investigation opened by Rose in his series of paintings and drawings "American Landscapes." Using found and mass media images of highways and gridlock, car accidents and crowds, or dense "old growth" forests and woods in North America, Rose illustrates and contrasts twin articulations of the "wild." The viewer is asked to balance contemporary urban sprawl with the mythic lure of pristine wilderness. Whereas previously Rose's work has been presented on the canvas or paper, here Rose will work directly on the wall, breathing the work's impenetrability to a life-size scale.

Central to Rose's practice is an interest in the moment when natural and synthetic systems break down, spiral out of control or otherwise prove irrational. Images of riots and crowds figure high on his palette, and as Rose states, "the represented forms walk the thin line between the mathematic or rational nature of the system and the irrational intuitive nature of the hand drawn lines." Wald questions our ability to categorize in both form and content and casts a suspicious eye on the paradox of America's Manifest Destiny.

Christopher Rose lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been shown throughout the United States as well as in Europe. Among other honors, he was selected for 2007-08 PS122 Gallery exhibition in New York. Rose received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Joy Beecroft

January 23 - February 28, 2009

Schalter is pleased to announce an exhibition by Joy Beecroft. The exhibition will present a series of new paintings by Berlin-based, British artist Joy Beecroft, completed for presentation at Schalter. This is the first solo presentation of Beecroft's work in Berlin.

Beecroft's new series of paintings has developed out of a rejection of everything she had accepted or understood as correct about how to make an image. In her own words, 'I had to find a way to make something rather than a picture of something'. Often taking a simple starting point, like a boot or hand noticed on the U-Bahn, her subject can be seen as a host able to assume a series of roles and missteps, leading to a culmination point where ultimately a character is elicited from the act of making. Painting becomes a process of starting out wrong and winning something from the losing side.

At the center of her exhibition at Schalter are paintings which develop out of the form of the Blackjack Oak leaf. The image was selected from an encyclopaedia of wildlife and nature in North America. Beecroft's paintings are laid bare, offering their failures and embarrassments up to the light. They are touched and touchable improvisations, constructed out of a series of slippages and mistakes, where lumps of oil are moulded and allowed to come forward, but then falter and disappear back into the gesso ground, questioning the desire for a payoff by appearing as refutations of resolution and immediacy.

Joy Beecroft was born in Yorkshire, England, and moved to Berlin in 2004, after completing her B.A. at Glasgow School of Art in Glasgow, Scotland. Her work has previously been shown in the UK and Germany.

She Was Here

Leonie Weber

November 29, 2008 - January 3, 2009

Schalter is pleased to announce She Was Here by Karlsruhe-based artist Leonie Weber. The exhibition will present video installation and photography as well as a small sculptural object. This is the first solo presentation of Weber's work in Berlin.

Weber's works concentrate on banal situations, shedding light on the complex relations behind the so-called "normal." Her videos show the impact of pride, disappointment, shame, and embarrassment on interpersonal communication and point to the conventions and expectations that provoke these feelings. Her models and installations explore the public and private environments within which human lives unfold and represent aspects of everyday life without striving to reproduce reality.

She Was Here is based on a series of artworks that Weber encountered over a period of years in her dreams. Ironically, the dreamt works appeared not to be her own, but rather those of other artists, friends, and students. The small sculpture, Rockport, for example, first appeared in a dream as the work of an 18-year-old female student, whom Weber had assigned to create something dealing with the student's surroundings. In another dream, an unknown female artist crashed Weber's exhibition opening and began to manipulate Weber's work as a "suggestion for improvement."

From such material attributed to others, Weber developed a series that nonetheless clearly bears her own signature: the depicted situations are loaded with expectation and the works themselves are framed by conflicted feelings such as amazement, jealousy, and envy of others' accomplishments.

Leonie Weber, who studied in Weimar and Chicago, lives and works in Karlsruhe, Germany. Her work has been shown throughout Germany, and in the United States. In 2008, she was awarded the annual fellowship of the Baden-Wurttemberg Foundation for Art.

Sticky Prism

Martin Esteves

October 17 - November 15, 2008

Schalter is pleased to announce Sticky Prism by New York based artist Martin Esteves. For this exhibition, Esteves has chosen to create a collage-like installation of his paintings as well as to treat the windows of the gallery with plastic films, creating a cathedral-like effect.

Martin Esteves uses acrylic paint to work on heavy plastic sheets. For many pieces, he layers his work in reverse, starting with the highlights first and ending with the application of the underlying forms. The finished painting then, is shown in reverse; either by turning the work around to reveal the brushstrokes behind the slick plastic surface, or the paint itself is peeled away from the plastic and hung directly on the wall. This technique is both a means to highlight the craftsmanship of the work and to simultaneously deflect or deflate its merit, allowing the viewer his or her own conclusions.

Within Esteves’ subject matter viewers are asked confront the familiar afresh. For example, we are offered an image of someone posing for a photograph; however the traditional dichotomy is reversed as the male diver in a full wetsuit acts as subject to a topless blonde whose body is turned away from our perspective. In another, what initially appears as a woman’s hair streams into stampeding horses. These tensions are similar to the ones implied by Esteves’ technique, where the crass confronts the sincere and the everyday and sacred touch the obscure and obscene, only to be turned inside out once again.

Martin Esteves lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been shown throughout North America, including New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Since 2004, he has been represented in New York by Hudson Franklin. This is his first solo-exhibition in Germany.

Classic Rock

Anthony Schrag

September 12 - October 11, 2008

Schalter is pleased to announce Classic Rock. The exhibition features an installation by British artist Anthony Schrag as well as a selection of video work documenting Schrag’s performances and interventions over the past several years. This is Schrag’s first solo presentation in Berlin.

Upon entering, Classic Rock immediately confronts visitors with a trampoline placed inside the doorframe, interfering with access to the exhibition space. Within the room however, viewers discover a shelf of beer perched precariously above the door and are invited to jump and help themselves. With the exhibition opening crowd in mind, the work draws attention to the body, the codes regulating social behavior and asks us to consider the border between the generous and the cruel or cynical.

Schrag’s work is interested in what he terms the 'body intelligent' - those innate and experiential sets of conditions that are understood phenomenologically (i.e. physically,) rather than through a lens of representational intellect and/or schooling relating to art and its contexts (i.e. mentally). As evidence of that, in his video work, we find the artist climbing things, falling, and bearing the burden of optimism literally as a cross in public. Conversely, in his museum and gallery interventions, viewers are subjected to pranks and practical jokes that test the limits of art’s preciousness.

Anthony Schrag was born in Zimbabwe and grew up in the Middle East, the UK and Canada. He has exhibited and performed throughout Europe, in Vancouver, New York, Mexico City, Beijing, and Iceland as well as across the UK and Ireland. He recently curated and organized a publication on Live Art commissioned by the Scottish Arts Council/Tramway Gallery that was published in June. He currently lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland.

Bidens hyperborea

Melanie Kress

August 1 - September 5, 2008

Schalter is pleased to announce "Bidens hyperborea". The exhibition features an installation by New York-based artist Melanie Kress. This is the first time her work will be presented in Berlin.

As the culmination of a summer internship at Schalter, Kress has chosen to introduce a Bidens hyperborea in to the gallery. Bidens hyperborea is a type of plant found throughout the United States, as well as in Germany and Europe. A member of the Daisy family, it is otherwise referred to as the "beggar-tick" or "stick tight," due to its flat, prolonged and often bothersome seeds, which cling to clothing, fur and feathers. The plant's flowers bloom in late summer and early fall, afterwards shedding the seeds that have earned its status as a common weed. Two of the five forms of the plant found in Germany were introduced to the country via these traveling seeds, and are often found growing alongside train tracks, roads, and the edges of wide, sunny fields.

Through the seemingly simple and innocent gesture of placing a flower, "Bidens hyperborea" considers the position of art and artist as simultaneously insider and outsider. Is the presentation at best, a "bloom" that quickly fades or is there something we take with us? Who is begging whom? Within an exponentially globalized world and art scene, how does what we potentially import unknowingly effect what we see and understand? And does the introduction of something "alien" have a potentially negative impact on the local environment?

Melanie Kress is an American artist currently studying art and linguistics at Columbia University in New York. In addition to her studies, Kress has organized and curated a number of exhibitions and events designed to integrate young artists with institutions from across the northwestern United States. This summer, Kress has completed an internship at Schalter, while continuing her German studies at Humboldt University.

what we want is what you want

Barking Dogs United

May 16 - June 28, 2008

Schalter is pleased to announce what we want is what you want. The exhibition features an installation, Skatefloor, by Barking Dogs United - an artist duo founded by Israeli artist Naomi Tereza Salmon, and Greek artist Nikos Arvanitis in 2005. This is the first time their work will be presented in Berlin.

For what we want is what you want, Barking Dogs United have replaced the floor of Schalter with one made up entirely of skateboards. All the boards remain functional, complete with grip tape, trucks, and wheels, creating an unstable and ever-shifting ground to stand on. Quite literally, the boards give and roll slightly with viewers as they move through the space, inviting a physical sense of insecurity to enter the work.

Barking Dogs United's work is often trained on questions about art's role and function in contemporary culture. Do we view the artist as a social activist dedicated to articulating society's ills, or an entertainer? What relationship does the artist have to the art market, galleries and audience? Who can or should we answer to, and to what end? Salmon and Arvanitis locate their work in the shuffle between order and chaos, self-promotion and humility, individual prerogative and global responsibility. And, as the exhibition title suggests, the work invites us to have it both ways, without offering an explicit answer or question.

Nikos Arvanitis was born in 1979 in Athens, Greece and has lived and worked in Germany since 2004. He studied in Vienna, Athens and Weimar. Naomi Tereza Salmon was born in 1965 in Jerusalem, Israel, and has lived and worked in Germany since 1991. Both artists have been featured numerously in both national and international exhibitions.