Mai-Thu Perret: Grammar and Glamour / Heidi Herzig & Ben Öztat: im fluss

Mai-Thu Perret: Grammar and Glamour 
Grammar and Glamour is Mai-Thu Perret’s first major solo exhibition in Germany. Perret works with a range of diverse media, i.e. painting, sculpture, ceramics, tapestry, film, performance, and text. In her work, the artist turns her attention towards discourses of feminism and spirituality, modernism, and the avant-garde, while numerous references to the Arts and Crafts movement reflect a revaluation of craft production as an alternative form of artistic expression. Realistic representations depicting female fighters and reformers converge with approaches to formal abstraction, which moreover reference Perret’s continuous scrutiny of painting and the possibilities of painterly transformation. 

Based on the large-scale project The Crystal Frontier (since 1999), which concerns a fictive feminist commune in the New Mexico desert, the exhibition weaves together various narratives about independent female figures: from the lesbian fighters in Les Guérillères (2018), based on a novel by the French avant-garde writer and theoretician Monique Wittig, to the archetypal figure of the witch, as reflected in the most recent works. While Wittig’s language evokes a series of works that draw on Dadaistic practices, Perret’s investigations of the witch lead to a group of ceramics and large-scale objects that are reminiscent of marshlands, forests, or the minimalist geometry of Zen gardens. Mai-Thu Perret stages witchcraft as a rebellious force in opposition to capitalist systems and restrictive gender politics. She activates marginalized forms and techniques, reanimates forgotten figures and evokes alternative stories challenging the linearity of conventional narrative structures.

Heidi Herzig & Ben Öztat: im fluss 
They entered the shop. The products on offer did nothing for them. They were interested instead in the spatial construction, which suspended all of the objects in the air.
 
Before long, they became aware of the tilted floor on which they stood. Tilted just enough, just enough inclination, so that it seems almost slanted. In pale blue. As the time passed gradually, or at least we must assume that it did so, there was a slight yet nonetheless noticeable change in the slope of the ground on which they found themselves, along with the relationship between their bodies and gravitation.
 
The result was a sudden leap, without the intervening space having been traversed, or the foam-like, fleeting, yet real experience of an unexpected change of direction. As though the vertical wanted to tell them something. 

From this point onward, they stroll with this serum, which was won from this incident, on the temples through angles and circles. Which, when necessary, are rearranged and repositioned in relation to one another according to altered laws of attraction. Many of them tell of a special aroma that is sensed in the course of this process, provided the wind has just turned.

Since 2014, disguised by pseudonyms, Heidi Herzig and Ben Öztat have roamed local as well as situative interspaces and gaps for joint intraventionist interventions. For the exhibition at the Badischer Kunstverein, they have broken with their individual positions in order to generate openings for synergies which also feel comfortable in a museal context.

Curated by Anja Casser

Public Program

September 7, 2019, 8pm
Performance The Blazing World 
Conceived by Mai-Thu Perret
Written and performed by Tamara Barnett-Herrin, Jacopo Belloni, Giovanna Belossi, Gregory Bourrilly, Sylvain Gelewski, Juliet Lakhdari, Mai-Thu Perret, Angeles Rodriguez / Spoken word and song by Tamara Barnett-Herrin / Soundtrack by Layer V / Costumes designed by Gregory Bourrilly and Giovanna Belossi. The performance was produced during a workshop at the Work.Master program, Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève), and commissioned by Spike Island, Bristol, UK. 

Events at Blauer Gang
Invited by Heidi Herzig & Ben Öztat

August 8, 2019, 7pm
Concert & Bar like someone in love 

September 11, 2019, 7pm
Performance-Lecture by Jan Erbelding 

September 15, 2019 
5pm Finissage with food and drinks / 6pm Performance by Maruf Satar 

More information on www.badischer-kunstverein.de