Kate Cooper
RIGGED
Schering Stiftung Art Award
14 September 2014−11 January 2015
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststraße 69
10117 Berlin
Hours: Wednesday–Monday noon–7pm,
Thursday noon–9pm
For her first institutional solo exhibition, awarded as part of the Schering Stiftung Art Award, this year’s winner Kate Cooper presents a new video and photographic production, made specifically for KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin.
In RIGGED, Cooper utilizes the new possibilities granted by CGI techniques, commercial photography, and post-production to render and modify images of the body, reflecting both on the labor inherent in creating such images, and on the work these downloadable, ultra-realized body doubles now perform on our behalf.
Cooper is interested in the fictional spaces of universally understood advertising images, tests our experience of them and relationship to them, and thus openly the questions our conceptions of gender and labor they collectively generate. RIGGED explores new possible connections between bodies and images, and presents tensions between presence and invisibility. With these modes of parallel labor, our own bodies use a strategy of refusal; and camouflage becomes a survival technique.
RIGGED displays the human being itself as commercial goods: the billboard-sized figures, installed throughout the space, focus on the body as a place for communicating ideas, for recoding and reconfiguring new meanings. As the rendered images become disturbingly realistic, Cooper’s doppelgangers surround the observer in their muted formations, and narrate their own illusionary potential, which is more permanent than flesh.
Ellen Blumenstein, chief curator of KW Institute for Contemporary Art: “With her flawless skin, her young body, and her symmetrical facial features, an ageless young woman moves through the artificial surfaces of her flat, digital space. This avatar is made for maximum productivity, her perfection is inconspicuous, and she takes care of everything in our place. A collection of social codes working on our behalf, she spares us from our social interactions and experiences our fears for us—a small sample of her skin has the power to fulfill our dream of eternal youth. So why does her repeating slogan ‘Disappear Completely’ end up sounding like no promise, but like a nightmarish threat?”
The Ernst Schering Foundation awards the Schering Stiftung Art Award every two years. The Award is endowed with a prize of 10,000 Euro, a solo exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and a monographic catalogue. It honors international artists who may be considered as the most important newcomers in the last couple of years and who pursue an outstanding original artistic approach. By awarding this prize, the Ernst Schering Foundation seeks to support the career of outstanding artists, and through the cooperation with KW, to offer them a platform for presenting their works to an international art public.
The exhibition Kate Cooper: RIGGED. Schering Stiftung Art Award is a collaboration between the Ernst Schering Foundation and KW Institute for Contemporary Art.
Also on view at KW Institute for Contemporary Art:
Ryan Trecartin
SITE VISIT
14 September 2014–11 January 2015
Mounira Al Solh
NOW EAT MY SCRIPT
7 December 2014–15 February 2015
Opening: Saturday, 6 December 2014, 5–7pm
Video installation
THE RETRACTION OF THINGS
14 September–24 November 2014
Exhibition series by Lukas Töpfer
The cultural programs of KW Institute for Contemporary Art are made possible with the support of the Governing Mayor of Berlin—Senate Chancellery—Cultural Affairs.
Further information:
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Henriette Sölter
T +49 (0) 30 2434 5942 / press [at] kw-berlin.de
Schering Stiftung / Ernst Schering Foundation
Andrea Bölling
T +49 (0) 30 2062 2960 / boelling [at] scheringstiftung.de
