COMMA
A dynamic new series of monthly commissions
Bernd Behr and Charlotte Moth
28 January – 20 February 2010
Bloomberg SPACE
50 Finsbury Square
London EC2A 1HD
For COMMA, Bernd Behr will present a group of loosely connected works including a new large-scale video projection depicting a series of uniform white concrete housing shells set amidst mounds of dug-up earth. Shot on the construction site of a new Bauhaus-themed gated community in China the piece chronicles part of a recent New Town development designed by Albert Speer Jr. The initial documentary nature of the video soon gives way to more ambiguous readings where distinctions between the new and ancient are suspended. Screened in reverse, Weimar Villa (Unreconstructed) depicts an endless cycle of construction and excavation, leaving the development to drift between an incomplete destination and an uncertain origin.
A series of sculptural works in concrete extend the archaeological motif of the video into the gallery. Leaning against the wall are a collection of individual flat panels of varying shapes and sizes. Their ambiguous forms, both hard-edged industrial and petrified organic, at once appear as both pre-cast construction components for some future, unspecified structure and archaeological relics of unknown origin. Like objects recently unearthed their presentation owes more to an architectural salvage than a museological system. A further set of freestanding sculptures entitled Quasicrystal Compass consist of hollow crystalline shapes in concrete precariously supported by modernist Arne Jacobsen tubular chair legs. Rough cast from timber carcassing, their formal language is informed as much by late Modern ‘Brutalist’ architecture as the tradition of Chinese scholars’ rocks.
Bernd Behr’s commission for COMMA brings together a constellation of new work which continues his interest in places and events that have shaped narratives around the history of the built environment. By inserting itself into these narratives using both research and fiction, Behr’s practice can be seen to operate a form of associative archaeology on the peripheries of architectural modernisms.
COMMA 18 Charlotte Moth
For her COMMA commission at Bloomberg SPACE Charlotte Moth will develop two separate works in sculptural dialogue with one another.
The first work consists of placing a shimmering blue sequinned curtain to envelop the balcony space. This piece follows a conceptual trail that responds to the specifics of a site and the development of a work through its own process of making and being re-made in a number of situations. Thus enabling the work to develop a narrative and life span of its own that goes beyond the temporary framework of a specific exhibition. Installed in the rear gallery at Bloomberg SPACE the curtain, through its vast surface area, displays the material nature of colour itself.
At a certain moment the curtain becomes an architectural threshold that must be physically passed through in order to gain access to a second, more intimate, space. In this contained space Moth will place a slide show that slowly reveals, through various angles and positions of the camera, an event performed solely for the purpose of being photographed. A large net filled with multi-coloured balloons is suspended in an otherwise empty hall. Flung high into the air, the balloons create various spatial configurations as they fall. Moth uses the construction of space and the site of display as a mirroring device to re-activate the event through the viewer’s experience of seeing this slide show. The theatrical nature of the photographed space, empty of human presence, echoes the architecture of Bloomberg SPACE’s towering atrium.
Moth’s COMMA commission extends her ongoing research-based practice which investigates how landscape, architecture, furniture, objects, and social and economic milieu work together to create a context that determines our relationship to place. Within Moth’s work, experience of space often leads to the invention of narratives, which can take form either in the mind of the viewer or be told by the artist through monologues or interior dialogues in the context of the installation.
About Bloomberg SPACE
Bloomberg SPACE is a gallery based at Bloomberg’s European headquarters in London and is dedicated to commissioning and exhibiting contemporary art. It welcomes visitors six days a week and admission is free.
COMMA continues with commissions including:
4 – 20 March 2010
COMMA 19 Damien Deroubaix
COMMA 20 Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Bloomberg SPACE, 50 Finsbury Square, London EC2A 1HD
Open: Monday to Saturday 11am – 6pm
Admission Free
Nearest stations: Moorgate & Liverpool Street
W www.bloombergspace.com
E gallery@bloomberg.net
T + 44 20 7330 7959
