Installation views of Bruno Schleinstein at Ebensperger Berlin

Installation views of Bruno Schleinstein, Photos by Ludger Paffrath, Courtesy of Ebensperger 

RALF'S FARBEN by Lukas Marxt as part of the exhibition "RALF LÜDDEMANN | Dead Is The Dog Shouts The Hare And Stays At Home"

Lukas Marxt, RALF'S FARBEN, DE 2019, 74 min 

on view at

RALF LÜDDEMANN
Tot ist der Hund ruft der Hase und bleibt zu Hause

(Dead Is The Dog Shouts The Hare And Stays At Home)
December 4, 2020 – January 23, 2021

"Ralf's Colors is an experimental portrait of a schizophrenic person living in Lanzarote (Canary islands), whom I accompanied for over 7 years. The film shows the struggle of his inner life in contrast to the deserted volcanic surroundings."

Lukas Marxt

"“We can’t use the same light, we have to use completely new keys with completely new light and even these can be found to a limited extent,” says Ralf at one point. The schizophrenic man’s words accompany much of this experimental portrait by Lukas Marxt (who worked in close cooperation with Michael Petri over a period of four years), layered over footage of Lanzarote, where the protagonist lives in seclusion. Landscape and cinema form an amalgam here, being both interior spaces of thought and feeling, and projected images of an outside. The thinking of the film’s main character does not run along straight lines, moving instead in circles, spirals, and Möbius strips, shaping the overall structure of the film: the viewer gets lost in this space, in time, in distances, searching in vain for a position in the actual physical sense, finding it instead (and as the result of this uncertainty) in an attitude, a specific formation of thinking which—paradoxically—is permanently moving, in a “succession of changing states” (Deleuze).

 

Stasis in motion, ongoing but frozen, a painting in time, Rousseau and Tarkovsky, a thought that takes shape in the process of thinking. Documentary? Science-fiction? Mindfuck? It is dizzyingly hard to describe what one sees and hears, because the reality in front of the camera could also be a wholly imagined future, or pictures from a time before cinema. In this film, language, writing, pictures, and music are both understated and exuberant, emptied and too full to generate meaning in the conventional sense. As if asleep, but more awake than ever, we look at the world, Ralf’s world, in which children are “built” and lives are “written,” a “half-fantasy” and a “new life” in which the weather is “recomputed,” like in a movie. Cinematographic madness and a precise portrait of a human being, dancing in the wind of Lanzarote, in the night, in the stroboscopic flickering of a streetlamp, in a completely new light.

 

Alejandro Bachmann"

Find out more about the film: www.ralfsfarben.com

Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards 2020

 

Frankenstein's Bloody Terror, Type 42 (anonymous), 1960s-1970s, mixed media on polaroid, 8.3 x 10.8 cm

Winner of the Catalogue of The Year 2020 at the Photobook Awards on occasion of the Paris Photo - Aperture Foundation 

“IMAGINING EVERYDAY LIFE: ENGAGEMENTS WITH VERNACULAR PHOTOGRAPHY”
 published by The Walther Collection

"The book Imagining Everyday Life - a new story enriched with the origins and characteristics of vernacular photography - grew out of a two-day symposium, organized by the Walther Collection at Columbia University in 2018. With scholars and critics from foreground evolving in different disciplines and regional perspectives aiming to reconsider the ordinary image through the prism of power, identity, political participation and ideology, new narratives hitherto largely ignored or erased are coming enrich the traditional reading of the vernacular. By redefining this photograph by its social function rather than by its aesthetic characteristics, and by an exploration of the means available, Imagining Everyday Life offers a much more detailed and extensive account of the history and role of vernacular photography. Richly illustrated and supported by texts "rigorous without being heavy", Imagining Everyday Life is, according to Joshua Chuang , member of the pre-jury, a real "essential re-examination of the subject". Lucy Conticello , member of the final jury, adds: “The quality of the research, its insightful contributions from a large number of archives and collections, as well as its high quality reproductions, make this book a reference work on vernacular photography.""

Find out more about the winning book: 
https://delpireandco.com/imagining-everyday-life-engagements-with-vernacular-photography-3/

Find out more about the Photobook Award at Delpire and Co: https://delpireandco.com/les-prix-du-livre-paris-photo-aperture-foundation-2020/ 

Type 42 (anonymous) at Delpire & co in Paris, on occasion of the Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards 2020

 

Fame is the name of the game, Type 42 (anonymous), 1960s-1970s,
mixed media on polaroid, 8.3 x 10.8 cm

"Delpire & Co presents the books selected for the Prix du Livre Paris Photo - Aperture Foundation 2020. Awarded since 2012, the Prizes reward the best photographic books published in the year, in three categories: First Book Prize, Book Prize of the year, Prize for the best exhibition catalog. A prize of $ 10,000 is presented to the winner of the First Book Prize. 

35 books were selected by a pre-jury which met in New York in September 2020, among the some 700 books received from around the world following a call for applications. This pre-jury consisted of Joshua Chuang (Associate Director for Arts and Photography, New York Public Library), Lesley A. Martin (Creative Director, Aperture), Susan Meiselas (President, Magnum Foundation), Sarah Meister (Curator for photography, MoMA), and Oluremi C. Onabanjo (independent curator).

20 books are selected in the first book category, 10 in the book of the year category, and 5 in the catalog of the year category. The entire selection is available for sale in the Delpire & co bookstore." 

Find out more about the nominated books here: https://delpireandco.com/les-prix-du-livre-paris-photo-aperture-foundation-2020/

“Imagining Everyday Life” featuring polaroids by Type 42 (Anonymous), published by Walther Collection is among 5 shortlisted in the category Photography Catalogue of the Year. 

Find out more about "Imagining Everyday Life" here:  www.walthercollection.com/en/collection/publications/imagining-everyday-life

RALF LÜDDEMANN I Tot ist der Hund ruft der Hase und bleibt zu Hause

 

 

Ralf Lüddemann, war for rain in end is no end, inkjet print, 76 x 192 cm

RALF LÜDDEMANN
TOT IST DER HUND RUFT DER HASE UND BLEIBT ZU HAUSE
(DEAD IS THE DOG SHOUTS THE HARE AND STAYS AT HOME)
December 4, 2020 – January 23, 2021

Extended Exhibition Opening
Friday, December 4, 11 am – 8 pm
Saturday, December 5, 11 am – 8 pm
Sunday, December 6, 12 am – 6 pm

“Ralf and I have been working together for five years. Since falling ill with schizophrenia, he now lives a self-imposed “life of punishment” on Lanzarote. He spends his whole time building planetary offices and is responsible for holding the entire world. He is king, he can travel into the future and the past, but he’s caught in what he calls the FIX. I have conducted and recorded many conversations with him. In the last year, he has begun painting images with MSPaint; he refers to these as the “daily keys.” His approach is oriented, amongst other things, around the principle of painting by numbers, where he uses the pixel grid to interpret and justify past and future events.” 

(Email from Lukas Marxt to Delmes & Zander, 18.01.2018)

Ralf Lüddemann (*1964) lives in Salzgitter throughout his childhood and adolescence. In 1984 he learns the trade of an orthopaedic mechanic, which he practices for six years. In 1990 his career takes a different path when he qualifies as an assistant flying instructor, and two years later he begins working as a paragliding instructor. In 1995 he opens a school for hang gliding and paragliding in Goslar. Following a long stay in hospital, he is forced to shut the school in 2003. He moves to Lanzarote in 2004, where he still lives today. The first, coincidental encounter between Ralf Lüddemann and the artist Lukas Marxt comes in 2012. In the years that follow, an intensive exchange develops between the two, in the course of which they produce the film Ralfs Farben (Ralf’s Colours, DE/AT 2019, 74 min) together. Ralf Lüddemann has been creating digital images since 2017.

He is the first artist in Delmes & Zander’s programme with an exclusively digital body of work.

Bruno Schleinstein @Ebensperger

 

Bruno Schleinstein, Entwurf Nr. 3, 1997, mixed media on paper, 42 x 29.7 cm

Bruno Schleinstein is part of the group show 

Freedom & Independence at the Ebensperger Gallery

  

"John Bock, Jörg Buttgereit, Bonnie Camplin, Christeene, Lea Draeger, Tim Etchells, Heiner Franzen, Assaf Gruber, Yuki Jungesblut, Sandro Kopp, Bjørn Melhus, Otto Muehl, Hajnal Németh, Bruno Schleinstein et al.

The exhibition “Freedom & Independence” borrows its name from Bjørn Melhus’ eponymous film Freedom & Independence from 2014. It will use its title as both, a motto and a theme, while understanding ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’ as value and virtue. Being an ever evolving show works will be added to the exhibition over the course of its yet indefinite duration.

It is conceived with Mehlus’ film at its core: This experimental short questions the current global ideological paradigm shifts towards new forms of religious capitalism by confronting ideas and quotes of the self-proclaimed objectivist philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand with evangelical contents of US-American mainstream movies.

The exhibition will examine themes implied by the film and draw variations from other artists’ contributions. They will be juxtaposed with Freedom & Independence in and at its centre. The works will range from spacial to drawings, from photographs to paintings. The size of the premises allow extensive installations that might change over the course of the show's duration."

The gallery is open daily around the clock only by appointment. 

For more information click here

Accrochage at the Gallery

 

Agatha Wojciechowsky, untitled, undated, chalk on paper, 60.5 x 45.3 cm

Accrochage at the Gallery from October 28th, 2020 with works from Agatha Wocjciechowsky, Helga Goetze and Alexandru Chira. Stop by to see it! 

 

Agatha Wojciechowsky was born in 1896, in Steinach, Germany. According to her own statement she experienced her first visions at the age of four. In 1923 she emigrated to the United States, where she worked as a maid, a seamstress, a laundress, and a kitchen helper in various hotels. After World War II, she became a well-known spiritual medium and a healer to a small circle of insiders. In 1951, she began to draw countless mediumistic drawings in which eerie spectral faces can be perceived through a maze of abstract forms and graphic symbols. “Mona”, the ghost of an American Indian girl, appeared to her one day and she began to draw according to Mona's instructions: “Take a small pencil, place it on a sheet of paper and watch what happens, immediately it, and I, began to draw and we drew and drew for a long time”. This is how Agatha Wojciechowsky describes the beginning of her artistic activity.

Helga Goetze (* 1922 Magdeburg, Germany, † 2008 Winsen, Germany), also known as Helga Sophia, was a German artist, writer and political activist, who lived and worked in Hamburg and Berlin. In 1972 she founded the Institute for Sex Information and published her first poetry collection Hausfrau der Nation oder Deutschlands Supersau (Housewife of the Nation or Germany’s Super Sow). Later on, Goetze kept close contact with the commune founded by the Vienna performance artist Otto Mühl and was actively associated with the Hamburg cultural centre “Fabrik”. After moving to Berlin in 1978, the artist started to maintain daily protest pickets in favour of women’s sexual liberation in front of the Technical University as well as the Berlin Gedächtniskirche. In Berlin, she also founded the “Geni(t)al University”, a gallery and open museum. Conversations with Rosa von Praunheim inspired her to make the film Rote Liebe (Red Love) in 1982. With the 1982 TV show Neue Nackte, neue Einsichten (New Nudes, New Insights), where she undressed in front of the camera, and several appearances on TV talk shows during the 1990ies, Goetze challanged the public debate around sexuality in the media. In 2000, she founded the association Metropole Mutterstadt e.V. (Metropolis Mother City) with a group of friends and in 2003, Monika A. Wojtyllo made a film about the artist, titled Sticken und Ficken (Embroidery and Fucking).

Alexandru Chira (1947, Tauseni, Romania - 2011, Bucharest, Romania), who was native of a small village in Transilvania, realized that the new idols of mechanized agriculture (tractors, threshers etc.) proved inefficient when faced with the tough limits of nature - his home village suffered of yearlong drought. Chira started to elaborate a sophisticated system of land-and-weather improving art equipment, a series of staggering, symbolic installations of painted metal, wire, and concrete. Their task was "to bring rain and rainbow", to convey prosperity, and prevent deluge. Later on, during the 1990s, already a university professor and acclaimed artist, Chira succeeded in accomplishing his lifelong dream: the ensemble in Tauseni, the biggest one-man-monument in Transylvania. Most of his prior (and later) works, either those on canvas or the drawings and objects are inspiring sketches or derivative works related to the monument. Maturing his art-agrarian fascination for decades, the monomaniac Chira deepened in the diverse branches of practical knowledge and spiritual speculation requested by such a bold plan. Architecture, design, astronomy, history, magic, UFO-logy, mysticism, shamanism, and theosophy conjoined in an effort to strengthen the material and immaterial assets of the project. Nothing is left to chance in his painted graphs. Their apparent visual geomancy is grounded on a peculiar conjunction of human will, sheer transcendence, and natural forces.