Isa Andreu, Hadar Bernstein, Rachel Carey, Aline Keller, Anke Kuipers, Cornelia Heusser, Esperanza Rosales, David Stamp, Joshua Thies, Kathrin Wolkowicz
“‘Never odd or even’ can be read from left to right and right to left. It is a so-called palindrome – which is what this fascinating phenomenon is called – comes from Greek language, where ‘palin’ means ‘to return’, ‘to go back on your own trace’, and ‘dromos’ means ‘the way’. Palindromes date back at least to 79 A.D., when a Latin word square – a sort of graffiti – was found at Herculaneum, buried by ash in that year.
Palindromes require quite some flexibility from the reader; while the correct sequence of characters is there, the spacing may not be. It works with numbers as well – palindromes can be formed from almost any number by adding the original number to its reverse form. For example, 47 is not a palindrome. If you add 47 + 74 (the reverse of the original number), you get 121, which is a palindrome. And, last but not least: they are also connected to the origin of life. Palindrome sequences are required for the recombination of DNA molecules.
This show takes ‘neveroddoreven’ as its title, because – as with art and as with most group shows – you can invest time in thinking about what it may mean, as you can try to construct implied meaning from spatially organized relations. Or, you can perhaps think about the game with words or numbers that functions backwards as well as forwards.”
About the artists
Isa Andreu grew up in Valencia, where the harbour saw a shift from a tightly knit working community to a small part of a vast globalized economy. In this context, Andreu was interested in memory. Central to her work was the idea of the forgotten archive. How can the past be narrated if an archive is lost or neglected?
Hadar Bernstein worked on architectural plans for the ‘black city’. There is a legend that the ‘white city’ of modernist Tel Aviv has a subterranean shadow. If the white city represents the desire to transport European 20th-century ideals to the Middle East, it is in the black city that the dark engines of control turn. News of the black city can only cast the shadow of rumour before evaporating.
Rachel Carey speaks in allegories. Humble creatures are given voices. Their meek forms cast big shadows. We were still living in caves when someone said: ‘Bring me a flame and with my hand I will show you the world in the shadows I make.’ This was the inventor of the first cinema. Around about the same time people started to realize that paradise is always somewhere else.
Aline Keller made an installation with six voices, which achieve some sort of communication through struggle, negotiation and repeated misunderstandings.
Anke Kuipers knows that a characteristic of the baroque is that the identities of things become indistinct. A throne for instance, unfolds onto the floor and ceiling to become architecture; the throne’s elaborate ornamentation might coagulate into a sculpture. Bernini and Kuipers share a fascination for the space between the second and third dimensions.
Cornelia Heusser built three stages, stacked on top of each other, spattered with textures and colours that stuck to the retina like chewing gum. On the top stage something seemed to have already happened or be about to happen. Human and non-human elements seemed to have assembled, ready to perform.
Esperanza Rosales wrote a script that dealt with two of the great inventions of the Romantic Movement: self-reflection and the interior monologue. The characters in her piece spoke in voices that sounded familiar to readers of Balzac, Shelly or Novalis. They were in search of companions with whom they could share their loneliness.
If the homunculus, as they believed in a bygone age, is a little human who lives inside every cell of every human, what lives inside of every cell of the homunculus? If it is a homunculus, then what lives inside of every cell of the homunculus? David Stamp‘s installation took viewers on a circuit through the carnivalesque. While things unraveled things fell together.
Joshua Thies assembled objects from a lost city – or maybe from a city yet to be built. He acquainted himself with maniac visionaries such as Camp King Gillette and Elisha Graves Otis, who wanted to build their own fantastic future-worlds. The psychological skin that covers such virtual worlds fascinated him.
Kathrin Wolkowicz explored the perception of time within film. How do the different tenses at play unfold and interact with each other? In her black and white 16mm silent film, text and images created a space where past and present tenses mingle.
artists
Isa Andreu, Hadar Bernstein, Rachel Carey, Aline Keller, Anke Kuipers, Cornelia Heusser, Esperanza Rosales, David Stamp, Joshua Thies, Kathrin Wolkowicz