Cycle 3:
Christina Mackie | Matt Mullican
30 August–13 December 2014
Grand Opening: 30 August, 7pm
PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art
Alexandrinenstraße 118–121
10969 Berlin
Germany
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 1–6pm
Christina Mackie
30 August–28 September: Drop
3 October–9 November: And Bird
13 November–13 December: Frog And
Matt Mullican
30 August–12 October: Third Person
16 October–13 December: Second Person
PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art is a not-for-profit venue for international contemporary art and research in Berlin founded in 2013. Situated in a two-story 200-square-meter former community building, PRAXES presents half-year cycles of consecutive exhibition modules, publications (the Papers), and live activities such as talks, performances, and film screenings (the Parlors)—all revolving around two unassociated artistic practices. Following Cycle 1 (Gerard Byrne | Jutta Koether) in fall 2013 and Cycle 2 (Judith Hopf | Falke Pisano) in spring 2014, the third Cycle at PRAXES is dedicated to the artistic practices of Christina Mackie (London) and Matt Mullican (Berlin/New York).
Christina Mackie
Testing the capacities of materials such as crystals, clay, garnet sand, and pigment blocks against forces of compression, gravity, technology, or sheer empirical observation, Christina Mackie’s over 30-year-long practice circumvents conceptual strategies and turns towards a meticulous investigation of the world of things and perceived interconnections. Her engagement with processes of dipping, dying, coating, collecting, and molding probes a multifaceted animation of the media. Often displayed in itinerant installations, Mackie’s œuvre broadens into a continuum rather than a series of insulated works. At PRAXES these connections will unfold in three parts. Combining developments in recent and upcoming work, the first installment posits the exhibition space as a test site with two sculptural sketches for an arrangement of color drop filters forming the point of departure. The two following exhibition modules—composed of existing pieces—take their cue from a dual-monitor work from 2000, Frog and Bird, in which a frog seemingly listens to a singing blackbird. While And Bird loosely deals with performative materials and fabricated interactions, Frog And concentrates on the incidental encounter, the attuned observation, the faces in the forest.
Born in 1956 in England and raised in Canada before relocating to London in the 1970s, Mackie has exhibited extensively with recent solo exhibitions including The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2014), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2012), and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2012). A monograph on her work, supported by the Contemporary Art Society, UK, will be released in 2015.
Matt Mullican
Articulated in a range of formats from photographs, pencil drawings, performances, texts, and pictographic charts, Matt Mullican has continuously tracked the constructions of subjective realities by repeatedly transgressing into and testing our relationship with abstract or “imaginary” realms. Given this expansive investigation of the structures and possibilities of our perception, Mullican’s Cycle at PRAXES will inhabit two connected chapters. The first will look at third-person narratives, spanning Mullican’s initial experiments with photographic portraiture, the first iterations of his stick-figure Glen from the early 1970s, and on to transcriptions of recent performances done under hypnosis—a series of repeated, almost musical utterances by “That Person,” the artist’s alter-ego. The second part will center on a string of live lectures and performances, turning to Mullican’s current investigation into the implications of the “you” in his practice—the strengthened identification with an imaginary character through a second-person point of view.
Born in 1951 and trained in Los Angeles and New York City, where the artist still partially resides, Mullican is based in and works from Berlin, teaching as professor of sculpture at the Art Academy (HfbK) in Hamburg. Mullican recently had solo exhibitions at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2013), Haus der Kunst, Munich (2011), Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (2010–2011), and Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne (2010). His work was also included in The Encyclopedic Palace exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia (2013).
For press inquiries, please contact Denhart v. Harling: dh [at] segeband.de.
