OUR PROJECTS
On a Clear Day One Can See Forever
The Kira A. Princess of Prussia Foundation presented the group exhibition “On a Clear Day One Can See Forever” from the 1st untill the 11th of February 2023 at Emami Art in Kolkata, India. Annika Hippler, Ingo Gerken and Lior Gal presented a new body of work created on the occasion of their exchange residency program we organised in collaboration with Emami Art. Coming from diverse backgrounds and representing different conceptual approaches the artists encompassed Indian notions of modern and contemporary art over the course of six weeks, creating works in situ that reflect their interaction with the city of Kolkata.
Annika Hippler‘s minimalistic and poetic works deal with questions about the nature of light, space and motion, showing references to physics and science. In her two- and three dimesional works she translates waves, vibrations and oscillations into analog photograms, site-specific installations and light objects. During the residency she contacted the J. C. Bose Museum and the J. C. Bose Botanical Garden to research the work of Kolkata’s famous scientist. Based on his experiments about patterns of reactions to external influences of the mimosa (better known as “sensitive plant” or “touch-me-not”) and the telegraph plant (or “dancing plant”) Hippler transfers these pulsations into her artistic language.
Ingo Gerken interacts with selected books, catalogues and magazines from recent art history, found in the collection of the Emami Art Library. By simply adding everyday items from Kolkata´s market places the opened art book becomes a thoughtfully open terrain for subtle shifts in meaning and poetic expansion. Gerken’s interventions enter into multi-layered interactions with depicted works and institutional contexts, exploring the balance of power and representation between eastern and western culture. Furthermore the artist shows sculptures made from objects found in the streets of Kolkata. Without losing the tracks of their original purpose, the objects change their orientation towards another state of being.
Lior Gal‘s work rearranges our prior knowledge about the relationship between land art and action-in-and-on the landscape. Predominantly, his work stems from traversals – long walks in arid places, during which left or found imprints in the landscape are being photographed in black & white. Gal connects these photographic landscapes to create a hybridized appearance of related times, places, perspectives and situations. The picture is further sophisticated when a thread is being coiled around the welded photographic appearance. This not only recalls existing religious rituals, but it also amounts to a ritual of its own, a form of evocation, which exploits the evocative power already imbued in Gal’s initial traversals.
On A Clear Day One Can See ForeverExhibition: Wednesday 1 to Sunday 12 February 2023Opening: Wednesday 1 February 2023, from 17:00 to 19:00Opening times: from Monday to Saturday, from 11:00 to 19:00Emami Art777, Anandapur EM BypassKolkata – 700 107, West Bengal, India
Lior Gal & Ghana Shyam Latua
The Kira A. Princess of Prussia Foundation and the Leipzig Institute for Communication in Tapetenwerk present a double solo exhibition with works by French/Israeli artist Lior Gal and Indian artist Ghana Shyam Latua. With their careful scrutiny of the immediate, both artists stand as a corrective to the expectation of human population against nature. Their respective compositions transcribe from the purest and most natural of all landscape perceptions. But where Gal’s installations and photographic collages are combined with veiling, Latua’s punctured sites vanish from the painting themselves.Lior Gal’s work rearranges our prior knowledge about the relationship between land art and intervening in the landscape. Predominantly, Gal’s work stems from traversals – long walks in arid places, during which left or found imprints in the landscape are being photographed in black & white. The appearance conveys a duality of night and day, high and low, inner and outer, here and there. It turns imaginary landscapes into actual ones, and vice versa. (Ory Dessau, art curator and critic)Ghana Shyam Latua’s group of carefully executed monochromatic landscapes on paper are constructed of scratches, with webs of delicate lines floating in a void. The landscape is in motion; in particular, the visceral red undulating laterite sites of Birbhum district in Bengal are central to his work, transforming these works into speculative mappings of change. (Ushmita Sahu, director of Emami Art)The exhibition is presented by Emami Art and the Kira A. Princess of Prussia Foundation.
Ghana Shyam Latua: The Lament of the Red EarthLior Gal: Lactic TransformationTapetenwerk, Lützner Strasse 91, 04177 Leipzig-Lindenau (Germany)Exhibition: 15 October to 29 October 2022Wednesday to Saturday, from 13:00 to 18:00 and by appointmentVernissage: 14 October 2022, from 18:00Finissage: 29 October 2022, from 15:00Ghana Shyam Latua in conversation with Kira Marina von Bismarck:15 October 2022, from 14:30
Lior Gal in conversation with Ory Dessau:29 October 2022, from 14:30
Radio interview with the artists: https://www.tapetenwerk.de/media/duosolos.mp3
Gianni Caravaggio
Marie 10 presents the exhibition “Gianni Caravaggio: Only the Heart Remains Young”.
Ayşe Erkmen
Marie 10 presented the exhibition “Ayşe Erkmen: Hochstapler”. Born in Istanbul, Ayşe Erkmen lives and works in Berlin and Istanbul. Based on the social and physical environment from which they arise, Erkmen’s projects intervene with and transpose an existing structure/situation, often creating ambiguous spaces by intertwining life and art in her works and slightly transposing or re-routing everyday spaces, objects, situations, and relationships. Ayşe Erkmen’s site and situation specific interventions refer to socialization models that unfold reality to create a space in which the artwork can only be completed by the viewer/participant.
“Is this already the exhibition or is it still being prepared? Ayşe Erkmen has conceived an installation for Marie 10 that could not be simpler and at the same time gets to the heart of an important starting point for any initiative for contemporary art: the space itself, its shape, its quality. In it, a single element rises up, takes measure and connects floor and ceiling. What might appear to be an archetype of a column is, however, nothing but a large roll of bubble wrap, sealed and tightened to the space by adhesive tape. Everyday packing materials of the art business have, as it were, “taken on a life of their own” and morphed into sculpture and installation.” (Julian Heynen)
Marie 10 is a temporary non-commercial art project initiated and curated by Kira Marina von Bismarck, Julian Heynen, Jörg Johnen, and Brigitte Kölle.
Ayşe Erkmen: Hochstapler
24 June to 6 August 2022
Marie 10
Marienstraße 10
10117 Berlin, Germany
Ingo Gerken
Ingo Gerken presented works from his series BIBLIOSCULPTURES in the solo exhibition “Lesesaal” at Kunstverein Ingolstadt, Germany. Gerken’s works conduct visual dialogues with various exhibition catalogues, monographs and magazines on contemporary art history. Inconspicuous objects and everyday items are mixed into the context of selected art publications and come into contact with the artworks depicted there. The result is a coexistence of object and image, a perspectival fusion, an associative exchange or a formal aesthetic leap.
The monograph on Ingo Gerken “Offenes Buch” was presented on the occasion of the finnisage of “Lesesaal” on 19 June 2022. The book is published by Hatje Cantz and funded by Stiftung Kunstfonds, Akademie der Künste, Neustart Kultur and the Kira A. Princess of Prussia Foundation.
Ingo Gerken: Lesesaal
21 May to 19 June 2022
Kunstverein Ingolstadt
Galerie im Stadttheater
Schlosslände 1
85049 Ingolstadt, Germany
Alexey Zuev
We presented “Stravinsky: The Complete Piano Solos and Transcriptions”, performed by Russian pianist Alexey Zuev. The 5 CD boxed set is launched by record label Fuga Libera and it is coproduced by Outhere Music and the Kira A. Princess of Prussia Foundation.
The set contains a series of arrangements and transcriptions for piano written by the composer himself that have never been recorded and have even remained completely unknown. Alexey Zuev was able to recover these treasures in the archive of the Stravinsky Fund with the support of the Fondation Igor Stravinsky. These world premiere recordings are a significant discovery that sheds new light on this aspect of Stravinsky’s work.
The Kira A. Princess of Prussia Foundation supports Alexey Zuev since the early start of his career. It is his very special relationship with Stravinsky’s music that shows in this incredible performance. His veritable marathon of recordings represents a formidable journey through Stravinsky’s complete solo piano music. The set is remarkably illustrated with previously unpublished photographs that immerse the listener in the world of those years of creative experimentation and innovation that made this music what it is today.
Lior Gal
The Kira A. Princess of Prussia Foundation hosted an exhibition of recent works by Israeli-French artist Lior Gal. On the occasion of Art Brussels and together with collector Stephan Marquardt we welcomed our guests in the artist’s studio where we invited them to a jazz concert by the Sal La Rocca Quartet, featuring Sal La Rocca (bass), Lorenzo Di Maio (guitar), Maayan Smith (tenor saxophone) and Umberto Odone (drums).
Lior Gal on his series A Journey on Foot: “I decided to start walking, again, around the idea of walking, and fast it became an obsession. There was a gentle flow of energy between the body and the work that kept me walking as far as I wished. It felt like stepping in and out of time in a place without reference…”
Beatriz Morales
Born and raised in Mexico City, Beatriz Morales (*1981) developed her skills auto-didactically from an early age. The artist left her native country Mexico in 2001 to pursue formal studies in painting, pottery and fashion design. Morales combines an investigative, abstract-expressionist approach with figurative and illustrative components.
For Color Archaeology she collaborated with the Lebanese cognitive scientist Yasmina Jraissati (*1978) investigating the question of how different colors are perceived in different cultural circles. Morales’s multilayered oeuvre – encompassing painting, installation, and video – and Jraissati’s scientific, philosophical view of the interplay between color and cultural influence open up to the reader an expanded perspective of art as a bridge between West and East, the traditional and the contemporary, the lives of individuals and universal cultural exchange.
We funded the artist monograph, published by Kerber Verlag, together with Circle Culture Gallery and Stiftung Kunstfonds.
Beatriz Morales: Color Archaeology
2 December 2021 to 15 January 2022
Circle Culture Gallery
Gipsstraße 11
10119 Berlin, Germany
Chiara Fumai
The Kira A. Princess of Prussia Foundation supported the exhibition Poems I Will Never Release, 2007 – 2017 which is dedicated to the work of Chiara Fumai. The show was curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi and Milovan Farronato, in collaboration with Mara Montanaro and presented at La Loge in Brussels.
9 September to 13 November 2021
86 rue de l’Ermitage
David Ranan
We supported the promotion of Sprachgewalt, the latest publication by political scientist David Ranan. It is a volume of essays that can be a guide to the differentiated use of language. Ranan is concerned with the power of language and the conscious use of words in political struggle. Language is used to manipulate, to exercise power and violence.
Fake news, spread through the media, creates insecurity. The accusation ’terrorist’ or ‘antisemite’ can not only make or break careers, it can even have life or death implications. Who uses them, how, when and to what end? Critical vigilance is called for when someone divides the world into good and evil with a few words, excuses crimes, condemns opponents and wants to make us his accomplices.
With contributions by Jonathan Alschech, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Micha Brumlik, Rikki Dean, Marion Detjen, Jana Egelhofer, Marcus Funck, Christian Geulen, Amos Goldberg, Christoph Gollasch, Neve Gordon, Gregor Gysi, Michael Kohlstruck, Brian Klug, Gesine Krüger, Meltem Kulacatan, Peter Lintl, Daniel Morat, Nicola Perugini, Michael Quante, Barnaby Raine, David Ranan, Jörn Retterath, Jonathan Rinne, Mohammad A. Sarhangi, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Peter Steinbach, Marc Volovici, Yair Wallach and Anton Weiss-Wendt.
David Ranan, born 1946, PhD, cultural and political scientist, grew up in Israel and the Netherlands. He lives and works in London and Berlin. His books on young Israelis in the army and the lives of young Jews in Germany, as well as on Muslim anti-Semitism in Germany, have been widely acclaimed.
Arotin & Serghei
We supported the promotion of the latest exhibition by Arotin & Serghei who created two complementary installations on the occasion of the music festival ManiFeste 2021: Infinite Light Columns on the facade of the Ircam at Place Stravinsky and Vertigo – Infinite Screen in the hall of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The project is an interdisciplinary collaboration by Arotin & Serghei with Klangforum Vienna, composer Brice Pauset and Ircam Centre Pompidou.
Infinite Screen
3 June to 27 September 2021
Ircam: 1 Place Igor Stravinsky
Centre Pompidou: Place Georges-Pompidou
75004 Paris, France
Hold Your Breath
Hold Your Breath is a group exhibition we produced and curated, presenting work by NK Doege, Alessandra Eramo, Pietro Fortuna, Lior Gal, Ingo Gerken, Annika Hippler and Lutz-Rainer Müller in collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Bruxelles.
In the Summer of 2020 a group of international artists shared a journey to Tuscany and Sicily. The exhibition Hold Your Breath collects those works that emerged out of this experience capturing the unspeakable richness of the Italian landscape. By so doing, it is as if the art holds the journey still, right at its beginning.
Hold Your Breath reflects on how the artists engaged with the heritage of Italian culture. The exhibition encourages visitors of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Bruxelles to do the same. In novel ways, its artworks mirror Italy’s abundant treasures. They also prolong a journey initiated by Ernestina Cantarella, founder of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Bruxelles, who wanted to retain solid cultural links with her country of origin.
Hold Your Breath includes a fundamental vision of the Istituto Italiano established long ago, since music and art have always been part of its working. In the attempt of transcending borders and creating larger communities, the Istituto Italiano has been engaging with forms of expressions beyond language. Since verbal communication is often unstable and imprecise, this exhibition aims to build bridges beyond language. It stimulates us to explore our human ability to connect emotionally as well as through memory, imagination and affect.
Changes of perspective offered by the selected artists grants us the privilege: “to gain in lightness as we grow.” Here we can grow without words, but with the aid of breathing and by allowing new impulses. The exhibition will breathe into the Istituto Italiano the notion of Italo Calvino’s “held breath”. In his Invisible Cities Calvino displays how the space surrounding these cities is a void without words. Holding your breath is easy for a brief moment, but over time it unveils our limits. It challenges us, unconscious breathers, to hold our breath. It compels us to explore consciously this journey into Italian culture and its outcome may change a moment, or even life itself.
Hold Your Breath
20 May to 4 June 2021
Istituto Italiano di Cultura Bruxelles
Rue de Livourne 38
1000 Brussels, Belgium
Martin Werthmann
We funded the publication of Catastrophe as Space, the new monograph on Martin Werthmann in collaboration with Heldenreizer Contemporary (Munich) and Wilding Cran Gallery (Los Angeles). With a particular focus on the artist’s Silence series, this book presents a comprehensive overview of the impressive work of the Berlin-based artist.
The artist monograph, published by Hirmer Verlag, is released in March 2021. It includes contributions by Sir Norman Rosenthal, Hubertus Günther, Barbara Josepha Scheuermann, Marcus Trautner, Sandra-Kristin Diefenthaler and Andrew Berardini.
We supported the promotion of Martin Werthmann’s exhibition The Catastrophe as Space.
Werthmann visualizes the decisive moment that characterizes every catastrophe: “There is a moment of truth within each catastrophe and […] this dissonance between beauty and violence. It is just about life and death […] everything else is meaningless in this truly moment. Therefore, I do not want to tell a story in my works. It is more like a cloud of different experiences where you can witness the tensions coming out of the related perception overkill.”
The Catastrophe as Space
4 December 2020 to 30 April 2021
Heldenreizer Contemporary
Türkenstraße 32
80333 Munich, Germany
NK Doege
We funded the publication of the catalogue NK Doege, together with Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen.
One could say that NK DOEGE formulates the gestures of painting in space whilst at the same time fundamentally rearranging the pictorial grammar of painting. The focus is now on the individual components and steps of constructing the work: material support, pigment and brushwork as well as light and air come to the fore with shifting, protean prominence and swap roles, whereby each element emancipates itself and becomes independent of the others.
Lior Gal
We supported the exhibition of Lior Gal, Mémoires Sans Image. The aura of the artwork and the relation of the viewer to its inner world are the subjects of the oeuvre of Israeli born and Brussels based artist, Lior Gal. In art history, the viewer approaches a work of art in relation to its depth of field. The space in front of the work belongs to the viewer, but the space inside the work is for the artist to divide and to construct as he sees fit. The tension between these two zones creates a vibration understood as the aesthetic world of the artwork. It is this sensation, which Walter Benjamin discusses in his text The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
Gal, a former assistant of Anselm Kiefer and Thaddaeus Ropac, quotes nature in an almost direct citation. He creates photographic work out of imagery collected during enduring hiking expeditions. These pictures are developed and appropriated as unidentifiable typologies of seemingly abstract forms. The construction of these landscapes suggests a new pictorial narrative that we recognize throughout art history, created out of fragments and pieces of dismembered reality.
Part of the rigor in Gal’s work lies in finding the tempo and the rhythm in the way the image presents itself as unaltered. In addition, it is here where the sensitivity of his work in the dark room is as painterly as an artist with a brush in his hand. He catches an image, which we do not recognize, but we relate to it because it forms part of our collective memory. The immediacy and the humility of the appropriated technique shows Gal’s need to let nature be. The artist waits patiently and out of this waiting, he creates something truly visionary.
Mémoires Sans Image
10 October to 24 November
Maison des Artistes Anderlecht
14 Rue du Bronze
1070 Brussels, Belgium
Women in Art
We supported the preview event of the exhibition ‘Memories of Now’, featuring international female artists and performances in the iconic venue Am Tacheles in Berlin Mitte. Our special guest, poet and author Cia Rinne presented performative readings with harpsichord accompaniment by Amine Mesnaoui.
Memories of Now
9 to 13 September 2020
Am Tacheles
Oranienburgerstraße 54
10117 Berlin, Germany
https://www.inpactmedia.com/art
http://www.beatrizmorales.com
https://www.instagram.com/siahlerien/?hl=en
Annika Hippler
We supported the promotion of Annika Hippler’s participation in viennacontemporary. At the time Hippler was an artist in residence at Bildraum Studio.
She presented large format works for the fair. For her work Danu she used water from the Danube which she set in motion, reflecting the imagery with laser light on black and white photo paper. Without the use of a camera, Hippler creates three-dimensional snapshots of superimposed formations which document the uniqueness and unrepeatability of the captured moment. Her work reveals a transparent view of the water’s inner world, portraying its structure and architecture in the course of its movement.
Viennacontemporary
26 to 29 September 2019
Karl-Farkas-Gasse 19
1030 Wien, Austria
http://www.annika-hippler.net
https://www.bildrecht.at/bildraum/bildraum-studio/annika-hippler
https://www.viennacontemporary.at/en/
