Kilian Rüthemann
Walking Distance
22 May – 15 August 2010
Tim Etchells
Fog Game
Opening: 3 September, 19:30
4 September – 21 November 2010
Opening hours:
Wed – Sun 2 – 7 p.m.
Am Deich 68 / 69
28199 Bremen, Germany
Walking Distance
22 May – 15 August 2010
Architectural spaces and the appearance of building materials are the two poles between which Kilian Rüthemann develops his sculptural interventions. His point of departure is usually a concrete place whose tectonic shell provides him with the occasion to reshape it. Rüthemann works with simple substances, such as plaster, sugar or bitumen, often changing their aggregate state in the course of the creative process. Plaster is mixed with water, sugar melted with heat and then broken up when it has cooled. This gives rise to works that testify to their own mutability and transience, that occasionally embed themselves in the existing architecture, but sometimes also thwart it. By handling these simple materials in different ways, Rüthemann repeatedly tests their formal and sculptural potential. He avails himself of their variableness to reorganise space and surprise the visitors with new formations.
Walking Distance shows three works by Rüthemann which he produced while engaging with the given spaces at the Künstlerhaus Bremen and adapted for the exhibition. A limestone carpet extends diagonally across the floor of the long room. The intervention modifies our perception of the room which it imbues with a certain dynamism. At the same time the carpet restricts the viewer’s freedom of movement. On the window side of the room are two crossed diagonals made of rough liquid plaster which are adapted to the course of the architectonic structure. Plaster-machines of the kind normally used on building sites are transformed into huge sprays with which fluid cement plaster is sprayed on the wall. The strictness of the minimalist approach is visibly relaxed here. On the wall opposite a prism-shaped wavy line of plaster extends the full length of the room – a piece for which the artist had recourse to the traditional technique of stucco work. His own gestures and movements become mirrored in the movements of the viewers, as if consciously stipulating how to explore the room.
Walking Distance is no mere assortment of formal and gestural citations, but enables the works to relate directly to one another. Rüthemann surprises us with expansive but simple gestures that make us more directly aware of the character and architecture of a space. Walking Distance at the Künstlerhaus Bremen is Rüthemann’s first institutional solo exhibition in Germany.
Tim Etchells
4 September – 21 November 2010
Opening: Friday, 3 September 2010, 7:30 p.m.
Language is the focal point of Tim Etchells’ art. Words are this British artist’s working material, be they integrated into a text-image, spoken, or taken out of context. Etchells plays with their potential to be multifaceted and interchangeable, and in doing so uses language as a system with infinite possibilities for combinations which he repeatedly takes apart and reassembles. In City Changes (2009) his text about a fictional city where everything remains the same is varied a total of 19 times. Due to sentences being exchanged and painted, the body of text becomes disjointed and slowly dissolves until in the end only a number of differently coloured word-series remain. The resulting images make up the description of a city in chaos, while at the same time in a process of constant change. By throwing the structural order into chaos, the artist also touches on widespread anxieties about the future of our society. People’s general feeling of insecurity, their fear of terror and climate catastrophes, turn up frequently in his stories, text works and video documentations. Always with a touch of irony, Etchells drafts utopian scenarios and science-fiction worlds, reports on gangsters and brutal children, a dismal cold future that awaits us. The protagonists of his videos and texts tell of their personal wishes and fears, their emotions, and of small miracles. Weaknesses, peculiarities, repetitions or verbal slips combined with a direct form of address embroil the recipient in a net of personal concern and public exposure. Tim Etchells will develop new language-based works for his exhibition at the Künstlerhaus Bremen.
Tim Etchells (*1962) is a fine artist, writer, director, dramatist and performer. His works have been on show in solo exhibitions at Gasworks and Butcher’s; he has taken part in international festivals such as Art Sheffield and Manifesta 7. In 1984 he co-founded the meantime legendary group Forced Entertainment, an ensemble of artists working on an interdisciplinary basis. As its artistic director, Etchells conceived and implemented dozens of performance and theatre projects. Forced Entertainment is regarded as one of the most influential experimental theatre groups in Europe.
A Forced Entertainment event will take place from 21 – 23 September 2010 at the Schwankhalle Bremen in connection with the exhibition at the Künstlerhaus Bremen.
