Ryan Weber
April 4 - May 10, 2008
Schalter is pleased to announce Please don't laugh at me. The exhibition will present new work by Schalter founder Ryan Weber, and will include a reconstruction of a photographic set by Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader (1942-1975).
Please don't laugh at me continues Schalter's investigation of how we understand and define the notions of exhibition and art work. Whereas traditionally we are asked to consider the exhibition as a whole made up of independent parts, Weber's work often asks to be seen as a gesture; that is as something that can be read both through what it presents, and what it represents as a decision and position.
Please don't laugh at me presents the viewer with two parts: a physical reconstruction within the gallery, and the provision of an additional title and invitation postcards. The reconstruction is based on a set Bas Jan Ader used to stage a photograph in 1969. Ader's original arrangement was set up to be photographed, and appeared as a black and white picture in two variations. Reframed here, Please don't laugh at me looks at the personal and authentic as well as where and how we locate the work of the work.
Ryan Weber is originally from Chicago, Illinois, and moved to Berlin in 2004. Weber received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was awarded the School's Trustee Merit Fellowship. Weber's work has been shown both in Germany and the United States, and his writing has appeared in numerous publications. A forthcoming essay, "You Can't Do That in Art" will appear in Live Art, a catalogue being published by the Scottish Arts Council.
In the Light of
Alex Buhler in collaboration with Schalter
February 15 - March 15, 2008
Schalter is pleased to announce "In the light of." The exhibition will present a collaborative installation between by Berlin-based, Swiss artist Alexander Buhler and Schalter. "In the light of" was created specifically for this context and is the product of a series of conversations between the artist and Schalter.
The role of the viewer within art has been subject to much scrutiny. Much of the writing surrounding the viewer has seen him or her as an activating agent who completes the work, and celebrated liberation from authorial intention. Less attention has been paid to the implied frailty and vulnerability of the artwork in search for the resonance within an audience.
As its multivalent title suggests, "In the light of" takes this notion of relationship as its starting point and foreground. Quite literally, to see something "in light of" something else, asks us to understand the one as dependent on the other. Recast here within the gallery walls, a series of disparate elements have been brought into a tense, if not sharp relief activated by the viewer through the use of a floodlight and a motion detector.
Alexander Buhler’s work often employs the accidental and failure as central to its conception, where the arrival of impasse is seen as a prompt to discourse and as a spur to new work. Working with various media, Buhler’s recent pieces have dealt with the transformation of everyday materials into a new dialog, questioning our relationship with them. Primarily a painter, his images are grounded on abstracts of architecture, nature and various collected sources, such as found and photographed objects. His work has been shown extensively in the United Kingdom and Germany. Swiss born Buhler received his degree from the Chelsea College of Art in London in 2003. He has been living in Berlin since 2005.
Door Draw with Wall Text
Ginny Reed
December 7, 2007 - January 12, 2008
Schalter is pleased to announce Door Draw with Wall Text. The exhibition will present an installation by Newcastle-based artist Ginny Reed, and feature a small text created for the exhibition at Schalter. This is the first time Reed's work will be shown in Berlin.
Through its use of the familiar "Something with Something" titling, Door Draw with Wall Text asks us to consider notions of framing and more specifically the “still life” as means to enter the work. Here, the focus has been repositioned to concentrate on the gallery and exhibition as its own composition: the exhibition space, the installation, the traditional "interpretive" text and the viewer are all activated as part of the arrangement.
Further compounding this organization is the installation of Ginny Reed's work. A simple white line traces the path of the door. The door is, quite literally, opened to viewer but that gesture must also be seen as part of the work. This form of doubling continues throughout the exhibition, confronting the viewer with a series of questions without clear motive or end.
Ginny Reed's work explores the accumulation and dispersal of materials and human actions to highlight the remnants of an event. Often, she uses the small and simple particles of the everyday materials around us to investigate infinite or transcendent. Her work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United Kingdom and across Europe. She is represented by the Workplace Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Mark Prince
October 19 - November 24, 2007
Schalter is pleased to announce the project room's first one-person exhibition. The exhibition will present a series of new work by Berlin-based, English artist Mark Prince and features several large word paintings, which were tailored as a project for Schalter.
In his new series, Prince continues his long exploration of location, remembrance, abstraction, and language. Whereas his earlier word paintings employed the use of stencils and commercially available fonts, here the artist has chosen to develop the work out of handwriting. The turn to “hand” slows down the painting process and anatomizes the act of handwriting, allowing the slippages and glitches of the process to remain an integral element of the work.
Prince's work often hints at an obscure form of story telling or narrative. We are given the names of places, or invited to consider the process of writing as itself a record of time and event. And while the words in the paintings can be understood as a sequence of places in a journey, or a thread connecting different places, our attempts as viewers to pinpoint the concrete behind the work are continually thwarted.
An attention and concern for modernism is also present in the paintings. Whereas for many the notion of handwriting might smack as the ultimate form of signature or individual gesture, here the writing is rehearsed, practiced and coolly aestheticized. The paintings are precisely and superbly executed, however we sense that the artist's persona is not at stake in the work. And language, which can easily be regarded as accessible and immediate, is rendered opaque and misleading. What we are left with is the work, which may or may not lead us anywhere.
Mark Prince is originally from Manchester, England and moved to Berlin in 1999. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Europe. In addition to his studio practice, Prince has written for Art Forum and Frieze, and is a regular feature contributor to the UK art magazine Art Monthly. In Berlin, he is represented by Galerie Crone.
Noch nicht sicher
Stephanie Brooks, Adib Fricke and David Sherry
September 14 - October 13, 2007.
Schalter is pleased to announce Noch nicht sicher (Still not sure). The exhibition will present the work of three artists: Stephanie Brooks (US), Adib Fricke (DE), and David Sherry (UK). It features installation, sculpture and video and was curated by Schalter founder Ryan Weber.
Designed as the opening gesture of Schalter's second year, Noch nicht sicher seeks to present work that questions notions of artistic and emotional certainty. How, where and why we derive value from the work of art reflects critically on our sense of the contemporary role and function of art. Noch nicht sicher challenges our understanding of purpose and the desire to rest on a referent.
Stephanie Brooks often uses minimalist strategies to address personal or emotional content. While formally the work may appear cold or distant, upon closer inspection we often find it wittily addressing issues of classification, uncertainty and struggle. Her piece, "A book that changed my life, and another one" undermines our ability to locate both the author and the content by introducing play between the physical objects and title. Brooks' work has been the focus of numerous exhibitions in the US and Europe. She is represented in Chicago by the Rhona Hoffman Gallery and in New York by the Peter Blum Gallery.
Berlin based Adib Fricke's language based work began in the late 80s. With the founding of The Word Company in 1994, he started to concentrate on the meaning of words and function of language. Set free of a clear referent, Fricke invites the word and language to disturb communication. Parallely, Fricke’s text collages invite the viewer to create their own sources and destinations. For this exhibition, he has created a new textual installation. Fricke, who is represented by Realace in Berlin, has been the subject of various international gallery and museum exhibitions. Most recently, his piece "Can’t simulate freedom" was included in the exhibition "Hannah Ahrendt Thinking Space" at the former Girls Jewish School in Berlin.
David Sherry lives in Glasgow, and recently completed a residency at Villa Concordia in Bamberg. His work explores the routines, codes and habits that structure our everyday lives. Often humorous, his work provides new insights into unseen aspects of social experience. "The Coke Dance" presents the artist literally dancing on the contents of a can of Coca-Cola. In 2007, Sherry was awarded an Open Frequency Commission and is represented in Dublin by Mother's Tankstation and Maes & Matthy's in Antwerp, Belgium.
Criteria
Galería Perdida, Mexico and Schalter present: Criteria
July 2007
For this traveling exhibition, a collection of slides has been assembled from eighty individuals. Presented with a traditional slide projector, together they make up Criteria.
There was no governing prompt presented to the artists other than requesting a single slide. The content therefore was derived without interference and may occupy several functions: the slide as documentation; the slide as artwork; or the slide as a catalyst to new viewing relationships. Artists from all backgrounds and practices are presented next to one another to compile their own unique narrative and subsequent dialogue. With Criteria, the focus will shift from the individual to the collective and back again.
Presented within the context of the ongoing exhibition Guest Curator, Criteria further extends the questioning of invitation, convention and curation.
Criteria: Yoshua Okun, Yoko Iida, William Belk, Walpa D'Mark, Susan Silton, Steve Roden, Star Rosencrans, Seann Brackin, Sarah Lasley, Ryan Weber, Ryan Taber & Cheyenne Weaver, Robert Wechsler, Robert Drakulich, Rachel Kushner, Philip Craighead, Ooga Booga, Nicholas Haggard, Nathaniel deLarge, Mike Cronin, Miika Nyyssonen, Michael Ned Holte, Michael J. Beck, Michael Brewster, Melody Morgan, Matthew Ashjian, Masato Takasaka, Mario Zamarripa, Magnus Thierfelder, Mads Lynnerup, Machine Project, Lynn Aldrich, Luke Stephenson, Lucas Brause, Louisa Van Leer, Libby Dierker, Kyle Jenkins, Kimi Kolba, Kiersten Puusemp, Katy Porte, Katrin Sigurdardottir, Justin Hansch, Julie Spielman, Julian Gross, Joyce Campbell, Joseph Lehman Morris, Joshua Erkman, John Knuth, Johann Johannsson, James Boulton, Ivan Limas, Ian Hunter, Gustavo Herrera, Gabriel Cifarelli, Francis Alys, Evan apRoberts, Elise Belknap, Doug Harvey, Diana Scherer, David Pagel, David Adey, Courtney Dauwalder, Christopher Michlig, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Cassandra Quackenbush, Cally Martin, Brad Eberhard, Bonnie Spielman, Bianca Kolonusz-Partee, Beth Gahan, Andres Janacua, Antonio Puleo, Anita Bunn, Amanda Ross-Ho, Alyssa Brackin, Alvaro Parra, Alfredo Barsuglia, Alex Slade, Akemi Martin
Guest Curator
Naomi Tereza Salmon
July 13 - August 11, 2007
Guest Curator presents the work of seven artists from across Europe and North America. The exhibition is curated by Naomi Tereza Salmon, an Israeli born artist, living and working in Weimar, Germany. It features painting, installation, video, photography and letters as well as "ready-made" objects.
For this exhibition, Naomi Tereza Salmon was invited to put together a show under the constraint that it ultimately be titled Guest Curator, and this concept was to act as the first step from which the exhibition be assembled. From the beginning then, the exhibition autonomy and concept of "curating" were compromised.
What follows are a series of works that investigate questions of privilege or choice, and appropriation. In the work of Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau, we see modernist, monochromatic painting rendered as labor by South American shoe polishers, who were paid by the artists to apply polish to a leather canvas until it became a "painting". In another act of appropriation, a letter sent to an autograph collector by Dieter Roth, states that he only signs "works of art", and is subsequently signed by the artist. The piece, which comes on loan from a private collector, was acquired on eBay. Dana Berg's oil painting depicts a voyeuristic glance on someone else's point of view; Nikos Arvanitis' object serves as a statement on entertainment; Tegan Forbes exchanges private information in public; Robert Elias Wachholz presents an unreadable book and the John Erickson Museum of Art presents a mini museum within the gallery, featuring a work by John Feodorov.
Guest Curator offers in a Droste effect manner, a take on the diversity of appropriation art, manifesting all its components in one show: a gallery, a curator, a concept, a museum, a collector, young artists, international artists, a dead artist, auctioned and signed paraphernalia, and musical entertainment for the opening. All media is present: object, painting, letter, intervention and documentation of an intervention, interactive art, web and video - and all in less than 25 square meters of space.
Guest Curator: Nikos Arvanitis (GR), Dana Berg (DE), Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paetau (US), John Erickson Museum of Art Presents: John Feodorov (US), Tegan Forbes (CA), Dieter Roth (DE), Robert Elias Wachholz (DE). Musical Act: MOSH MOSH (DE). Naomi Tereza Salmon (IL/DE) was born in 1965 in Jerusalem, Israel. Salmon studied at the MFA "Public Art and new artistic Strategies" at the Bauhaus University, Weimar. She is an artist as well as an independent curator and also works as a moderator and member of the advisory board of the non-commercial radio station, Radio Lotte in Weimar.
www.galeriaperdida.com
www.mosh-mosh.com
Prenostalgia
Ryan Weber and Hanna Fischer
May 12 - June 23, 2007
"That's what I call it when you longingly remember a future ... that never happened." - Anonymous
Schalter is pleased to announce its new exhibition:
Prenostalgia will present a series of photographs made in collaboration between Hanna Fischer, a Berlin based photographer, and Schalter founder Ryan Weber. The work will present large format photographs made in the exhibition space for this show.
Images of past happenings are pervasive in history of 20th century art. For those born after the 1960's, much of what we know to know about -from the images of Dada actions to Acconci's "Following Piece"- comes to us in the form of grainy videos and stills or photographs reproduced in books and magazines. While the question remains open if we "had to be there" to appreciate the work, it's often difficult not to wish we had been.
Prenostalgia will look at this process by presenting itself as show about the idea of making a show about this desire. The work represents an interrogation of the types of images we have inherited: the lone figure in the studio, the glimpse "behind the scenes", or the possibility of empty space. And, underpinning it all, a sincere desire to imagine a future where we can look back on the present longingly.
Ryan Weber is an American artist, curator, and writer based in Berlin, Weber received his Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was the recipient of the School's prestigious Trustee Scholarship, awarded in recognition of artistic merit. Weber's work and exhibitions have been shown internationally, and his writing on art has appeared in numerous US publications. Most recently in April, Weber's work was included in the show “Criteria” at Galería Perdida in Chilchota, Mexico. Schalter was started by Weber in October.
Hanna Fischer was born and raised in Berlin. As a child of television producing parents, she discovered a passion for photography early in her parent's darkroom, and developed her work independently through a number of assistantships and professional training programs. Since 2004, she has been working as a freelance photographer. Her work can be seen in a number of local and international publications.
Take2
Christopher Rose and Terrence Hannum
March 23 - May 5, 2007
Take2 will present the work of two young American painters; New York based Christopher Rose, and Chicago's Terence Hannum. The majority of the work has been created specifically for this exhibition which represents the first time Rose and Hannum have been shown together.
It's equally as difficult to imagine presenting the work of two painters without beginning at the question of "why paint," as it is to imagine what new, or fruitful discussion could come from that interrogation. Take2 will present the work of two painters who are clearly engaged in the process of selecting their subject matter, material and method in a world where this conundrum is viewed as a given.
Take2 as a title, has multiple resonances. Formally, both artists are working from still images, often derived from film or video, which are then transferred a 3rd time to paint. Both artists revisit events that might be seen as spectacular phenomena: the accident and subsequent pile-up on a highway at rush hour, and the moment within a concert where a fan's camera flashes and bleaches out the scene. Both artists have also, for this exhibition, been "taken" and brought to Berlin.
Christopher Rose takes found photographs as a starting point. Manipulating and projecting the images, he then reworks the image to investigate the energy and dynamics within a group situation, be it a riot, strike, protest or massive traffic jam. Rose has been featured in a number of U.S. and international exhibitions. Most recently his work was the subject of a solo exhibition in Paris, at Galerie Brissot & Linz.
Chicago based Terence Hannum also centers on the live event. In Hannum's case, the work often begins with a filmic documentation of a live concert. Following this, Hannum slows down and distorts the source to concentrate on the moment where the documentation breaks down. Within this moment Hannum finds a moment to gain access, interpret, translate, remember, invent and forget. In February, Hannum's work was shown in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago's 12x12 Series which features emerging new artists from the city.
Made For Each Other
Justin Hansch, John Knuth, Jason Starr, James Krone, Kiersten Puupsemp and D'Nell Larson
January 26 - March 3, 2007
Schalter is pleased to announce its new exhibition: Made for Each Other: Los Angeles' JMOCA at Schalter.
Made for Each Other will present the work of six artists in a colloborative exhibition between JMOCA (Justin's Museum of Contemporary Art) and Schalter. JMOCA is a Los Angeles based exhibition space that exists both online and in the physical space of JMOCA founder, Justin Hansch's, residential space. Each JMOCA event is celebrated with a one-night exhibition and opening in Justin's home. Made for Each Other, will represent the first time the space has been presented outside of LA.
Made for Each Other, is designed to function like an introduction; introducing a small community of artists from LA to Berlin, bringing disparate groups from Berlin to the intimacy of JMOCA, as well as acknowledging a shared vision between JMOCA and Schalter. Both JMOCA and Schalter sprung from a desire to be part of the institution, to be included and to view the exhibition and context as central to the work of art.
For this exhibition, a small number artists have been invited from LA to travel to Berlin including Justin Hansch, John Knuth, Jason Starr, James Krone, Kiersten Puupsemp and D'Nell Larson. The exhibition will include painting, photography and video, as well as sculpture and installation. The majority of the artists included in the exhibition are represented by leading galleries in the US and have shown in leading international arts institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Opening Exhibition
Ryan Weber
October 20 - November 25, 2006
Opening Exhibition was developed by Ryan Weber, and features an oversized American fishing bobber occupying the gallery's front exhibition room.
Quite literally, the bobber is a fisherman's only outward sign that anything is happening beneath the surface. Anyone who has gone fishing on a lake is aware of the tension, tedium and pleasure of watching and waiting for that all-important "bite."
Recontextualized within the art world then, the bobber functions as a rich metaphor, yielding numerous questions while refusing to commit to any singular reading. Who are the fish, and where or what is the bait? Also of note is that the bobber is an "American style" bobber, further complicating readings of the work and gallery as in this instance the bobber is, once again, out of place.
Conceptualized as the gallery's opening gesture, the work examines the role and function of gallery space in general, while simultaneously acknowledging Schalter's position within the current flood of art and exhibitions in Berlin.
