Press_Andro Wekua - Kunsthalle Fridericianum

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KUNSTHALLE
FRIDERICIANUM
Friedrichsplatz 18
D-34117 Kassel
www.fridericianum-kassel.de
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12 March – 5 June 2011
ANDRO WEKUA
Pink Wave Hunter
In his art, Andro Wekua combines collective and personal memories
into poignant, in part disturbing representations. The gloomy and
uncanny as phenomena and fear as a symptom of the human psyche play
a big role in Wekua’s works. He purposefully uses formal devices –
often well known patterns from the horror film genre – to create a
narrative structure that evokes corresponding feelings. Wekua grew
up in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and was driven out of
the country in the course of the Civil War. In his installations,
collages and films, pictures repeatedly flash up that are related to
this aspect of his life. Personal aspects in his work, however, only
serve as an illustration enabling him to raise more general questions about universal truths. What happens when our subjective memories mix with foreign images? When we try to fill gaps in our memory
with historical or contemporary documents? Or when fantasy provides
the cruellest of answers? The last question revolves around the
psychology of “getting the creeps” and corresponds to a popular
stylistic means of Wekuan scenographies.
In his pictorial works, Wekua combines motifs he finds in magazines,
on the Internet or in photo albums in painterly fashion and with
pastings into multi-layered, kaleidoscope-like collages. Experiences
and lore overlap on a visual and narrative level. He also applies
this technique in his sculptures, installations and particularly in
his films and videos. His often dramatically presented installations
attest to a tendency towards the narrative: naturalistically reproduced albeit alienated figures seem to be frozen in situations –
similar to a video still – revealing only a moment of a more complex
whole. Characters from his installations appear as protagonists of
his filmic works. Wekua collages by using figures of his earlier
works, taking pictures out of their context and putting them in a
new structure. The new elaborately produced film that will be shown
at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum testifies to this principle. Never
Sleep with a Strawberry in Your Mouth is a filmic collage that
brings together images from memory with the narrative logic of the
horror movie.
At the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Andro Wekua is presenting for the
first time Pink Wave Hunter, a work group that conjures up the heavily destroyed and abandoned buildings of Sukhumi, the city in which
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he was born. In 15 individual architectural models, he combines his
memories dating back 17 years with information gained from research
on the internet and photo exchanges with other exiles. The fact that
these are not faithful reconstructions, but highly subjective constructs, is revealed not only by the visible “memory gaps” – for
example, when a sculpture shows only the façade of a building because the memory was not sufficient for the rest. The choice of
materials, which differs with each building, also seems to be subjective and above all emotional. His selection of buildings is based
on their personal relevance to him, on the one hand, and on their
general popularity on the other. Wekua points to a fundamental problem here: we can view the past only through the distorting mirror of
subjective memory, inextricably entwined with collective memory and
the ideal images that superimpose themselves on repressed memories.
When we envision the past, we always apply it to the present. Wekua
visualizes these pictorial layers of memory with an acute sense for
the repressed that he conjures up in his work. This is also apparent
in the older video work Sicut Lilium Inter Spinas (2003), which when
viewed together with the new film seems to anticipate the latter,
which, for its part, intensifies the images and additionally boosts
their intensity with horror film-like narration. The exhibition also
includes paintings, collages and sculptures which, in typical Wekua
fashion, appear as mysterious figures whose context unfolds in the
imagination depending on the viewer’s past experience and is only
hinted at in its outlines.
In collaboration with the Kunsthalle Wien and the Castello di Rivoli
in Turin, a three-volume catalogue published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, is being produced to accompany the exhibition.
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BIO ANDRO WEKUA
Andro Wekua wurde 1977 in Sochumi, Georgien, geboren und hat in
Basel Kunst studiert. Zurzeit lebt und arbeitet er in Berlin und
Zürich.
Zu seinen aktuellen Einzelausstellungen gehören im Jahr 2011 Never
Sleep with a Strawberry in Your Mouth in der Kunsthalle Wien; A Neon
Shadow im Castello di Rivoli, Turin; im Jahr 2010 Books, Editions,
and the Like im Swiss Institute, New York; Workshop Report im Museion, Bozen, und im Centre d’Art Contemporain Wiels, Brüssel, 2009;
Sunset. I love the Horizon im Le Magasin CNAC, Grenoble, sowie My
Bike and Your Swamp in De Hallen, Haarlem, und im Camden Arts Centre, London (alle 2008); und im Jahr 2007 Wait to Wait im Museum
Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
Andro Wekua war an einer Vielzahl internationaler Gruppenausstellungen beteiligt, unter anderem an 10.000 Lives, 8. Gwangju Biennale,
Gwangju; Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim
Museum im Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, (alle 2010); Bad
Habits in der Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; modern modern im
Chelsea Art Museum, New York, (beide 2009); und Shifting Identities:
(Schweizer) Kunst heute im Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, 2009,
und im Kunsthaus Zürich sowie an Life on Mars, 55. Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (beide 2008).
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COPYRIGHT
Please use following copyright details for the downloaded photos.
Datei 1
Andro Wekua, Never Sleep with a Strawberry in Your Mouth (film
still), 2010
Courtesy: the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York/Brüssel
Set photo: Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili
Datei 2
Andro Wekua, Pink Wave Hunter Series (detail), 2010/2011
Installation view Kunsthalle Fridericianum
Courtesy: the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York/Brüssel
Photo: Nils Klinger
Datei 3
Andro Wekua, Pink Wave Hunter Series, 2010/2011
Installation view with Pink Wave Hunter (Pier Amra) und
Pink Wave Hunter (Railway Bridge)
Courtesy: the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York/Brüssel
Photo: Nils Klinger
Datei 4
Andro Wekua, Should be titled (detail), 2010/2011
Installation view Kunsthalle Fridericianum
Courtesy: the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York/Brüssel
Photo: Nils Klinger
Datei 5
Andro Wekua, Pink Wave Hunter, 2011
Installation view with Neon with Arches, Should be titled (detail),
2010/2011, 2010/2011 und Untitled, 2006-2011
Courtesy: the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York/Brüssel
Photo: Nils Klinger
For further information or questions please do not hesitate to contact Friederike Siebert
E [email protected] T +49 561 707 27 86
www.fridericianum-kassel.de
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