Kristin Brunner, Christian Horacio Probst, Nina Radelfahr, Patricia Wich and Léa Manoussakis di-Bona
15.-30.09.2026
Opening, 15.09.2026, 6 pm
For the next exhibition presented at the whiteBox space, GiG Munich enters a collaboration with four of the studio artists – Kristin Brunner, Christian Horacio Probst, Nina Radelfahr, and Patricia Wich – and, in addition, one guest artist, Léa Manoussakis di-Bona, to curate together the group exhibition “The Refrain.” The refrain is a philosophical concept first put forward by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, and refers to the mechanism through which order is established, specifically the kind of formal organisation produced by behavioural patterns of living beings, animals and people alike. The refrain carries an implicit demand to shift perspective, to move away from thinking spatially, to become attuned to the intensities of rhythm. All participating artists work with rhythm, whether these are the rhythms found in nature (Radelfahr) or the open-ended rhythms of play (Probst). Social rituals relating to celebration or death are a key aspect of Wich’s and Brunner’s art practice, and Manoussakis’ interactive sound installation concentrates on the act of rehearsal.
The exhibition will be accompanied by four studio crits, during which responses to each studio artist’s work will be discussed in a group setting. The exhibition is conceived rhythmically, no longer seeing the work as objects in a space but as a means of inhabiting a landscape.
Für die nächste Ausstellung im whiteBox-Ausstellungsraum arbeitet GiG Munich mit vier der dort arbeitendenen Künstler*innen – Kristin Brunner, Christian Horacio Probst, Nina Radelfahr und Patricia Wich – sowie einer Gastkünstlerin, Léa Manoussakis di-Bona, zusammen, um gemeinsam die Gruppenausstellung „The Refrain“ zu kuratieren. Der„Refrain“ ist ein philosophisches Konzept, das erstmals von Deleuze und Guattari in „Tausend Plateaus“ formuliert wurde. Es bezieht sich auf den Mechanismus, durch den Ordnung hergestellt wird – insbesondere jene Form von Ordnung, die durch Verhaltensmuster von Lebewesen – Tieren wie Menschen – gleichermaßen hervorgebracht werden. Der Refrain fordert implizit dazu auf, die Perspektive zu wechseln, sich vom räumlichen Denken zu lösen und sich auf die Intensitäten des Rhythmus einzulassen. Alle teilnehmenden Künstler*innen arbeiten mit Rhythmus, seien es die in der Natur vorkommenden Rhythmen (Radelfahr) oder die offenen Rhythmen des Spiels (Probst). Soziale Rituale im Zusammenhang mit Festen oder dem Tod sind ein zentraler Aspekt der künstlerischen Praxis von Wich und Brunner, während sich Manoussakis’ interaktive Klanginstallation auf den Akt des Probens konzentriert.
Begleitend zur Ausstellung finden vier Ateliergespräche statt, in denen die Arbeiten der einzelnen Künstler*innen gemeinsam diskutiert werden. Die Ausstellung ist rhythmisch angelegt und betrachtet die Arbeiten nicht mehr als Objekte im Raum, sondern als Mittel, eine Landschaft zu bewohnen.
together with The Tiger Room at Heßstr. 48 b, 80798 Munich
Julia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet, 2025, installation viewJulia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet, 2025, installation viewJulia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet, 2025, installation viewJulia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet 3, 2025, steel, glaze, ceramic, pigment, 46 × 34 × 42 cm Julia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet 3, 2025, steel, glaze, ceramic, pigment, 46 × 34 × 42 cmJulia Klemm, Evasion, 2025, steel, glaze, ceramic, pigment, cloth, 23 × 23 × 65 cm Julia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet, 2025, installation viewJulia Klemm, Transcending territories, 2024, glaze, ceramic, pigment, 32 × 30 × 48 cm Julia Klemm, Julia Klemm, Transcending territories, 2024, glaze, ceramic, pigment, 32 × 30 × 48 cm (detail)Julia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet 4, 2025, secondhand ceramic figures, steel, glaze, ceramic, screws, 27 × 46 × 260 cmJulia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet 4, 2025, secondhand ceramic figures, steel, glaze, ceramic, screws, 27 × 46 × 260 cm (detail)Julia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet 4, 2025, secondhand ceramic figures, steel, glaze, ceramic, screws, 27 × 46 × 260 cm (detail)Julia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet 4, 2025, secondhand ceramic figures, steel, glaze, ceramic, screws, 27 × 46 × 260 cm (detail)Julia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet, 2025, installation viewJulia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet 2, 2025, steel, glaze, ceramic, pigment, 44 × 38 × 74 cmJulia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet 2, 2025, steel, glaze, ceramic, pigment, 44 × 38 × 74 cmJulia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet 2, 2025, steel, glaze, ceramic, pigment, 44 × 38 × 74 cmJulia Klemm, Untitled, 2025, secondhand ceramic figures, glaze, ceramic, fired soft toy, chandelier, 12 × 14 × 11 cmJulia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet, 2025, installation viewJulia Klemm, Double trouble, 2025, ceramic, steel, pigment, glaze, 24 × 34× 60 cmJulia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet 1, 2025, secondhand ceramic figures, glaze, ceramic, steel, fired soft toy, 15 × 25 × 14,5 cmJulia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet 1, 2025, secondhand ceramic figures, glaze, ceramic, steel, fired soft toy, 15 × 25 × 14,5 cmJulia Klemm, A chimera is not a pet, 2025, installation viewJulia Klemm, Mimicry, 2025, second ceramic figures, steel, chandelier, glaze, ceramic, 12 × 14 × 8 cmJulia Klemm, Gryphon, 2025, secondhand ceramic figures, glaze, ceramic, steel, fired soft toy, 18 × 22 × 17cmJulia Klemm, Gryphon, 2025, secondhand ceramic figures, glaze, ceramic, steel, fired soft toy, 18 × 22 × 17cmJulia Klemm, Gryphon, 2025, secondhand ceramic figures, glaze, ceramic, steel, fired soft toy, 18 × 22 × 17cm
The problem I think, is that too often a chimera is seen as a pet. We visualise chimeras as these mythical fire breathing monsters, maybe with a lion’s head, a body of a goat, and a serpent for a tail. Three distinct animals are combined into one, their individual characteristics clearly visible for us to see. In contrast, biologically,a genetic chimera is often invisible, a nightmarish combination of two different sets of DNA, a result of one or more zygotes fusing together during the early stages of prenatal development. How this alien DNA might manifest is not altogether clear, but you hear stories of mothers having different DNA than their children, and the DNA from semen and saliva not matching in rape tests. To look for distinctions in chimeras would be the first step towards their domestication, treating the hybrid animal as another family member, a pet. But you cannot cuddle the long lost twin you might be carrying with you, inside.
Julia Klemm’s ceramic work often involves a combination of several smaller ceramic pieces, each with their own specific animal DNA. Sometimes these are readymade figurines of cats, lions or horses, glossy and kitsch, inhabitants of Flohmärkte and Omas’ living rooms. At other times, these are recreations of existing public art, of lion statues such as those found on Odeonsplatz, scanned, scaled down and then modelled with a 3D-printed negative mould. Rarely, an animal-type structure is moulded in clay by Julia on the spot, traces of fur scratched with a serrated scraper onto its surface. These smaller animal ceramics are first broken, smashed into almost unrecognisable fragments before they are combined, their intertwining made permanent by the heat of the ceramic oven. I look for these fragments as I walk around the work and try to classify them: look, here are some lion’s legs, and here, a cat’s head, but upside down and half-broken, so that I can see the form inside and outside. Focussing on the surface helps, as I detect the glossy spots of a panther or the layer lines of the 3D printer.
In doing so, I am looking for a pet, with fur strokable like a pastel-coloured soft toy. I try to make the strange shapes of Julia Klemm’s work once again familiar to me. But their outward appearance is a result of a logic that remains hidden. The work demands I see it as a multiplicity, which means in animal terms, as a population. And science teaches us that a population is not a fixed set of individuals of the same species, but an always evolving, interacting mass that changes in relation to its location and environment. The alliances made in a population are not just of the filial kind between individual members of the group, but those made with other groups, other animals, with plants, and with geography. To see the inner workings of the animal in Julia Klemm’s ceramics, I need to step away from the animal and take a more expansive view, one that acknowledges population change forged by mutation. It is very alien to see the world in this way, as foreign and as violent as the shards of steel that interpenetrate the work, both holding it together and ripping it apart.
Anna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, installation view (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, installation view (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, installation view (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, installation view (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, detail (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, installation view (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, installation view (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, detail (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, installation view (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, detail (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, detail (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, detail (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, installation view (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, detail (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, detail (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, detail (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, installation view (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, installation view (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, detail (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas SplettAnna Łuczak, Sophie Schmidt, “Brutality of Spring,” 2024, detail (porcelain plates, white paint, wood ribbon, metal plate holders, cutlery, make up). Photo: Thomas Splett
A person has died.
Andrea Éva Győri is dead.
These two statements are not the same, though they might seem very similar. When I say, E. is dead, I think of her and how she was, someone I never met but heard so much about: the tone of her voice, her laugh, her enthusiasm and strong personality. She is someone with a consciousness, a memory, a personal identity. But when I say, a person has died, I mean something different. The logic is different because it is impersonal. It has nothing to do with E. and yet everything to do with her. A person is singular – the one – yet not particular. I cannot say anything specific about a person. A person is dead is an indefinite statement, because a person is a life, and life is indefinite, singular, impersonal.
How can I describe a life? Without talking about E. who lived? Deleuze was right, this requires an empiricism, an empirical kind of thinking, an almost scientific kind of rigour. I keep making lists:
There is the Marzanna, an effigy out of twigs and straw that Polish children drown in a nearby river as spring approaches.
There is the life cycle of the salmon, swimming upstream and spawning, then dying and their bodies fertilising the river.
Did you know that skeletal muscle stem cells continue living up to 17 days after all other cells have died?
That scene in Dicken’s novel, “Our Mutual Friend,” when the Rogue lays dying in Miss Abbey’s first-floor bedroom. While he barely breaths everyone tries to help, but as soon as his eyelid trembles, his nose twitches, the doctor and the four men grow distant and caution returns.
Anna Łuczak and Sophie Schmidt made a series of porcelain plates together, as individual responses to E.’s passing. Anna made the plates and wrote the texts, Sophie painted images:
There is the day of E.’s diagnosis. The breast cancer.
There is the day at the crematorium.
And the time just after, laying on the floor.
There is salmon spawning, seeds germinating.
The plates refer to the domestic language of the vanitas. We eat on them with fork and knife, we wash them and we put them away. The colourful ribbons belong to the “kapliczka,” the wayside shrine found on nearly every road in Poland, equally catholic and pagan. Sophie Schmidt’s wooden structures hold everything together ever so precariously, extensions of the body, with the body’s fragility, strength and breakability.
Eine Person ist gestorben. Andrea Éva Győri ist tot. Diese beiden Aussagen sind nicht identisch, obwohl sie sehr ähnlich erscheinen mögen. Wenn ich sage: „E. ist tot“, denke ich an sie und an die Person, die sie war, obwohl ich sie nie persönlich kennengelernt, dafür aber viel über sie gehört habe: vom Klang ihrer Stimme, ihrem Lachen, ihrer Begeisterung und starken Persönlichkeit. Sie ist jemand mit Bewusstsein, Erinnerung und einer persönlichen Identität. Aber wenn ich sage, „eine Person ist gestorben“, meine ich etwas anderes. Die Logik ist eine andere, weil sie unpersönlich ist. Es hat nichts und alles mit ihr zu tun. Eine Person ist einzigartig – genau die eine – und doch nicht besonders. Ich kann nichts Spezifisches über eine Person sagen. „Eine Person ist tot“ ist eine unbestimmte Aussage, denn eine Person ist ein Leben, und Leben ist unbestimmt, singulär, unpersönlich.
Wie kann ich ein Leben beschreiben? Ohne über E. zu sprechen, die gelebt hat? Deleuze hatte Recht, dies erfordert Empirie, eine empirische Art des Denkens, eine nahezu wissenschaftliche Gründlichkeit. Ich mache immer weitere Listen:
Da ist die Marzanna, eine Puppe aus Zweigen und Stroh, die von polnischen Kindern in einem nahegelegenen Fluss ertränkt wird, wenn der Frühling naht.
Da ist der Lebenszyklus der Lachse, die stromaufwärts schwimmen und laichen, dann sterben und mit ihren Körpern den Fluss befruchten.
Wussten Sie schon, dass die Stammzellen der Skelettmuskeln bis zu siebzehn Tage weiterleben, nachdem alle anderen Zellen bereits abgestorben sind?
Diese Szene in Dickens’ Roman „Unser gemeinsamer Freund“, als der Schurke sterbend im Schlafzimmer von Miss Abbey im ersten Stock liegt. Während er kaum noch atmet, versuchen alle zu helfen, aber sobald sein Augenlid zittert, seine Nase zuckt, werden der Arzt und die vier Männer misstrauisch und zurückhaltend.
Anna Łuczak und Sophie Schmidt haben als individuelle Reaktionen auf E.s Tod gemeinsam eine Serie von Porzellantellern entworfen. Anna schrieb Texte, Sophie malte Bilder:
Da ist der Tag von E’s Diagnose. Der Brustkrebs.
Da ist der Tag im Krematorium.
Und kurz danach, als wir auf dem Boden lagen. Der Lachs laicht, die Samen keimen.
Die Teller verweisen auf die häusliche Sprache der Vanitas. Wir essen auf ihnen mit Gabel und Messer, wir waschen sie ab und wir räumen sie weg. Die bunten Bänder gehören zu den „kapliczka“, den Bildstöcken, die man in Polen an fast jeder Straße findet, gleichermaßen katholisch wie heidnisch. Sophie Schmidts Holzkonstruktionen halten alles auf äußerst fragile Weise zusammen, sie sind Verlängerungen des Körpers, mit seiner Zerbrechlichkeit, Stärke und Brüchigkeit.
In Poland every year in spring, school children gather together at the banks of frozen rivers to drown the Marzanna. I remember throwing stones at the doll to make her sink faster. We then walked home without looking back.
Salmon swim upstream to lay their eggs in their home river. They die and their decomposing bodies help fertilise the water.
Everyone helps the rogue in the Dicken’s novel as he lays dying in Miss Abbey’s first-floor bedroom. But as he grows warm – “Did that eyelid tremble? Did that nostril twitch?” – the doctor and the four men cool and “their faces and their hearts harden to him.”
These occasions recognise what for Deleuze is not reducible to experience, but which nevertheless can be confronted: a life. Not the lived, individual life, so full of things that need to be done, but a life, singular and impersonal, indefinite; a life with no moments, but only the in-between, a passage, a becoming, of events yet to come that have already happened. “Pure power and bliss” Deleuze writes. Just life, only life, a life.
In “The Brutality of Spring” Anna Łuczak and Sophia Schmidt collaborate together in homage to a recently deceased mutual friend to produce a multimedia installation, a vanitas-type project, founded equally in the transience of domestic sphere and the fragility of the human body.
Hêlîn Alas,Pierre-Yves Delannoy, Lukas Hoffmann, Veronika Hilger, Ju Young Kim, Anna McCarthy, Jonathan Penca, Curtis Talwst Santiago, Valio Tchenkov, Ayaka Terajima, Gülbin Ünlü, Paul Valentin, Max Weisthoff
7.09 -28.09.2024
Temporary venue at Schillerstr. 38, Munich
Hêlîn Alas, Carrying the Earth to the Sky, 2024, installation view with “Up and Up and Up and Up,” 2024, trampolines, cable ties, speakers, sound, cables, 490 x 165 cm and “Still Faced,” 2024 framed photo print (part of a series) 100 x 70 cm. Photo: Produktion PitzHêlîn Alas, “Traumhaus junior,” 2024, caramel, 118 x 90 x 8 cm. Photo: Produktion PitzHêlîn Alas, “Traumhaus junior,” 2024, caramel, 118 x 90 x 8 cm. Photo: Produktion PitzPierre-Yves Delannoy, “embroideries on cashier’s ticket,” 2019-24, cotton yarns, thermo paper, dimensions variable (8 x 16 cm (X10)). Photo: Thomas SplettVeronika Hilger, Carrying the Earth to the Sky, 2024, installation view. Photo: Thomas SplettVeronika Hilger, Untitled, 2024, ceramic, 27 × 24 × 3 cm. Photo: Thomas SplettLukas Hoffmann, “Figure,” 2020, MDF, oak, aluminum, acrylic glass, 50 x 45 x 8 cm. Photo: Lukas HoffmannLukas Hoffmann, “Castle,” 2024, Spraypaint, plywood, screws, MDF dyed through, 100 x 100 x 200 cm. Photo: Lukas HoffmannJu Young Kim, “Almost like Whale Watching,” 2024, a pair of aircraft fairings, stained glass, rivets, LED, 240 x 38 x 46 cm (X2). Photo: Younsik KimJu Young Kim, “Almost like Whale Watching,” 2024, a pair of aircraft fairings, stained glass, rivets, LED, 240 x 38 x 46 cm (X2). Photo: Younsik KimAnna McCarthy, Carrying the Earth to the Sky, 2024, installation view with “Car Crash b/w,” 2001, analogue photograph 230 x 160. Photo: Thomas Splett Anna McCarthy, “Car crash installation,” 2024, mixed media, dimensions variable. Photo: Thomas SplettJonathan Penca, “Synanthropop,” 2024, paper-maché, plaster, polymer clay, resin, cardboard, acrylic paint, wood, glass, digital print on paper, plinth, 120 x 60 x 60 cm. Photo: Thomas SplettJonathan Penca, “Mitten Crack,” 2024, paper-maché, plaster, polymer clay, resin, wooden bird whistle, lipstick, cardboard, acrylic paint, digital print on paper, plinth 120 x 60 x 60 cm. Photo: Thomas SplettCurtis Talwst Santiago, “History of Touch” 2024, installation view detail. Photo: Thomas SplettCurtis Talwst Santiago, “History of Touch” 2024, installation view. Photo: Thomas SplettValio Tchenkov, Carrying the Earth to the Sky, 2024, installation view. Photo: Thomas SplettValio Tchenkov, Carrying the Earth to the Sky, 2024, installation view. Photo: Thomas SplettAyaka Terajima, Carrying the Earth to the Sky, 2024, installation view. Photo: Thomas SplettAyaka Terajima, “Long legs doki,” 2023, Unglazed fired ceramic by recycled clay, 60 x 100 x 130 cm. Photo: Thomas SplettGülbin Ünlü, “Karanlik isik,” 2024, wood, printed fabric, dimensions variable (site specific installation). Photo: Thomas SplettGülbin Ünlü, “Karanlik isik,” 2024, wood, printed fabric, dimensions variable (site specific installation) detail. Photo: Thomas SplettPaul Valentin, “Kasside,” 2024, site specific video installation. Photo: Thomas SplettPaul Valentin, “Kasside,” 2024, site specific video installation. Photo: Thomas SplettMax Weisthoff, “perpetuator,” 2024, sculptural sound installation, 5 objects, cable, dimensions variable (site specific installation). Photo: Thomas SplettMax Weisthoff, “out of flesh,” 2024, mixed media installation, 2 channel video, x objects, dimensions variable (site specific installation). Photo: Thomas Splett
“Carrying the Earth to the Sky” will present works by 13 artists who are currently active in the contemporary art scene in Munich. The artists were selected in a two-stage process. First each of the 37 participants of VARIOUS OTHERS nominated one artist currently living in Munich. From this group, an international jury consisting of four institutional curators selected 13 artists who will show their work as part of the VARIOUS OTHERS program in September. The jury acknowledged that the quality of the applications received made their task both exciting and challenging. The final selection of multi-generational artists reflects the desire to see art beyond fixed categories and clichés and to honour distinctive works.
The exhibition’s curator, Magdalena Wisniowska, has meticulously chosen the works in collaboration with the artists. These will be presented together in an overarching curatorial concept at Schillerstraße 38 under the title “Carrying the Earth to the Sky”.
“The earth is something human, something we keep under our feet. The sky high above is without air, where no living thing can breathe. Moving away from one to the other means letting go of the earth and constructions that belong to it – actions, bodies, objects, sensations and desires – until only the elements, disconnected molecules, remain.”
We would like to express our gratitude to all supporters of the exhibition, particularly the owners of the property at Schillerstraße 38, the Cultural Department of the City of Munich, the Edith-Haberland-Wagner Foundation and Serviceplan Group for their generous support.
Jury: Rosa Ferré (TBA21, Madrid) Luis Silva (Kunsthalle Lissabon) Nicola Trezzi (CCA, Tel Aviv) Vivien Trommer (K21, Düsseldorf)
Lothringer 13 Studio, Lothringer Str. 13, 81667 München
Sophia Mainka, Chien et canal, 2024 video still (3.44min, fullHD, without sound, loop)
We participate in nature and nature participates in us: in her art practice, Sophia Mainka has always been open to strange encounters with animals, plants and minerals. The work created during her stay at the Fondation Fiminco in Paris deals with the coexistence of different species within an urban space. Parrots fly across the city, a whale swims up the Seine and dogs walk on paved streets. Mainka responds ethologically, allowing the animal encounter to affect the way she acts. “Notes on Roommates” is a series of video sculptures Mainka first presented at the residency, restaged at GiG Munich. To produce her fictitious gathering of animals, she builds a room for them: industrial material is bent into organic shapes and upholstered with fabrics featuring botanical patterns. Here we see her become dog, her painted fists becoming paws; we see her as the whale, in the murky river water, rising up to breathe.
Wir sind Teil der Natur und die Natur ist Teil von uns: Sophia Mainka öffnet sich in ihrer künstlerischen Praxis für ungewöhnliche Begegnungen mit Tieren, Pflanzen und Mineralien. Während ihres Aufenthalts in der Fondation Fiminco in Paris entstanden Werke, die das Miteinander verschiedener Arten im urbanen Raum thematisieren: Papageien fliegen durch die Stadt, ein Wal schwimmt die Seine hinauf, Hunde laufen auf gepflasterten Straßen. Mainka reagiert ethologisch, lässt zu, dass diese Begegnungen ihr Handeln beeinflussen. „Notes on Roommates“ ist eine Installation mit Videoskulpturen, die sie während ihrer Residency präsentierte und nun im GiG Munich neu inszeniert. Um die Zusammenkunft der Tiere darzustellen, baut sie einen Raum für sie: Industrielles Material wird zu organischen Formen gebogen und mit botanisch gemusterten Stoffen gepolstert. Mainka verwandelt sich selbst in einen Hund, ihre Fäuste werden zu Pfoten; wir sehen sie als Wal, der im trüben Wasser auftaucht, um zu atmen.
Kindly invited by Sperling Munich, Regerplatz 9, 81541 München
Throw of the dice, 2024, installation view. Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Throw of the dice, 2024, installation view. Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Throw of the dice, 2024, installation view. Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Sophia Mainka, Oracle des Plantes series, 2024, silicone on cotton, 75 x 57 x 1 cm each. Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Sophia Mainka, Tarot (Wheel of Fortune), 2924, silicone on cotton, 190 x 121 x 1 cm. Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Sophia Mainka, Tarot (Wheel of Fortune), 2924, silicone on cotton, 190 x 121 x 1 cm (detail). Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Lukas Hoffmann, Pan, MDF, paper, wood, spray-paint, 41 x 22 x 19 cm. Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Throw off the dice, 2024, installation view. Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Lukas Hoffmann, Schloss, 2024, paper, wood, screws, spray-paint, 158 x 102 x 75 cm. Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Lukas Hoffmann, Schloss, 2024, paper, wood, screws, spray-paint, 158 x 102 x 75 cm. Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Lukas Hoffmann, Schloss, 2024, paper, wood, screws, spray-paint, 158 x 102 x 75 cm (detail). Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Lukas Hoffmann, Schloss, 2024, paper, wood, screws, spray-paint, 158 x 102 x 75 cm (detail). Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.Sophia Mainka, We used to be wild, 2024, video loop (full HD, stereo), 17 min & 17 sec. Photo: Sebastian Kissel, courtesy Sperling, Munich.
Throw of the dice – down a slippery slope
A standard game of dice is not a game of chance. At stake is probability, the odds of throwing this or that number, easily calculable. This is why we often lose, as the fable famously forewarns.[1] The young man inherits an estate and quickly gambles it away. In one sweep an entire forest is laid low. Is bad luck to blame? No, replies Fortune to an angry Pan. Just the foolishness of man.
A game of chance takes place on a far more slippery slope, like the round of croquet played in Alice in Wonderland, a game of cards of sorts.[2] Flamingos are mallets and a hedgehog is a ball. Whenever Alice wants to hit the hedgehog with the flamingo’s head, the bird turns floppy and spins round to look at her so comically that she laughs. And when she finally gets the flamingo’s head down, the hedgehog crawls away. In this game, cards move away from us and the players play all at once, quarrelling and fighting while the queen screams, “Off with their heads! Off with their heads!” For in a real game of chance, anything can happen. This would be the challenge: throwing the dice without knowing the rules of the game. To continue throwing the dice while accepting that each time the rules of the game change.
This is Nietzsche’s divine game, played across two tables, the earth and the sky.[3] Each time the dice is thrown the earth trembles, because the dice returns to us as divine. At that moment when the dice hover briefly in the air, they belong to the gods and all is possible. Our task is to affirm the entirety of possibility, any fate the gods prepared for us, cooking all of chance in one pot.[4] In this forest, we must wander bewildered and wild.[5]
In the exhibition, Sophia Mainka shows a series of wall mounted works made from silicone paste. Heavy and solid, yet curiously slippery, they are based on a Tarot deck of cards. It is peculiarly appropriate that the largest is the wheel of fortune, usually interpreted as standing for change or becoming. Fortune can be good or bad depending on the game, the question asked of the cards, open to interpretation. In Tarot, one card can mean many things and then change meaning at different times. In contrast, destiny is the thread woven through the image and cut by the three mythological sisters. The turn of the card is always fateful. Whatever the outcome of the roll of dice, this outcome is necessarily so: sky back to earth, slide and snip.
Perhaps then, we wander not quite so bewildered in this forest, as we necessarily follow our fate. But we wander on a surface without ground or depth, because free of cause. Everything in Mainka’s work takes place on the surface, like the hybrid creature scuttering around the ornate interiors of the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in her video. It imitates not animals, but depictions of them. The two talking dogs are not half-human but half-sculpture, their head and paws the same silicone as Mainka’s wall pieces. In Nazim Bakour’s music score, they do not bark, but whoop with the sound of the cuica drum.
Lukas Hoffmann too stages a fictional world that has something of Lewis Carroll’s unsettling absurdity about it. There is a wooden castle with ears, eyes, a wide open mouth and a nose, and it is both too big and too small. Drink me, eat this, nibble both sides of the mushroom circle. As Alice grows bigger, her initial self also becomes smaller, pulled in both directions at once. With components jutting out and sliding in, the body both outside and inside, the castle too grows small as it becomes big. “Becoming without measure, a veritable becoming-mad.”[6] Observing this madness is the upside down head of Pan, the mischievous god of the wild. A mascaron fallen from its pediment. Run away in panic, it urges us – run away in chaos, it smiles.
[3] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Book III, “Before Sunrise”, trans. Kaufmann, p.166cd and “The Seven Seals” 3, p. 258. See also Deleuze’s reading in Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson, (London and New York: Continuum, 2002) p. 25–7.
[4] Zarathustra, Book III “The Bedwarfing Virtue” 3, p. 189.
Lothringer 13 Studio, Lothringer Str. 13, 81667 München
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At each corner, each fork in the road, we encounter the same: Man. Not some man, a particular man with a friendly, if white European face, but man as a standard on which every opposition is based. This is the man that is the principle term in the opposition of male/female, white/red, rational/mad. A center point from which all other points take measure. The point of origin all other points echo. This kind of man is one “gigantic memory.”
The path we take instead is a straight one, without any crossroads. As soon as we open the door to the Lothringer 13 Studio space there is only the left. Nothing takes place on the right hand side. On the left there are four large windows covered with transparent red filter and once again there is no alternative to the redness that saturates the entire room with colour. Also on the left there are three deck chairs clustered around some speakers. Left is an open window. A poster hangs at the very edge of the distant wall behind.
At each step of the exhibition “The Flamekeepers” Lilian Robl invites us to think of lines. In this sound sketch that is part of the preparation work for a larger video piece, the protagonists – Emma Hauck, Ingeborg Bachmann, Rabe Perplexum – are not points but lines. For points would be women who as minorities are defined in opposition to the major term, man. Whereas lines flicker with flames of becoming. The lines of becoming are not the mathematical lines of history connecting two or more distant events in the point system of memory. Rather these lines pass between points, constituting a distinct no-man’s land. On this land no man can stand, because here is a place where the discernibility of points disappears. Deleuze and Guattari write that these murky zones form a “line-system of becoming.”
Robl is very good at identifying these indiscernible points, these lines of becoming, in order to constitute a kind of anti-archive, a non-collection of anti-memories. There is Emma Hauck, who in her schizophrenia feels she can control her world and make a nurse jump or a housefly drown. She sits down to repeatedly write to her husband: komm! Her writing is her body as she mechanically writes and rewrites the same word. Her writing is also a landscape she sees out of her window, a grey forest of lines you can walk into. Recalling Heathcliff’s wish to embrace Catherine’s corpse, Ingeborg Bachmann writes of wanting to embrace the skeleton of her lover, filling her decayed mouth and choking on the with the dust he has become, at one with his nothingness. Rabe Perplexum changes their name by deed poll to become-raven, flying about and causing havoc from Gärtnerplatz to Stachus.
Their’s is a terrible suffering. Emma Hauck dies in the Wiesloch asylum, without ever seeing her husband or daughters again. While high on drugs, Ingeborg Bachmann accidentally sets herself alight and dies from her injuries. Rabe’s tongue is a knife and they commit suicide after alienating their friends. To walk in straight lines and not remember – not to make memories by not connecting the distant points of historical events – is painful. But pain and suffering is also what brings about proximity. We are close to them in their suffering because we no longer separate entities but participants in becoming. When there are no binary distinction at play, they can affect us still and something of theirs passes to us. The wound for Robl must continually be licked open.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), 293.
Lothringer Studio, Lothringer Str. 13, 81667 München
Emma Hauck. Ingeborg Bachmann. Rabe Perplexum. Not points but lines. Lines which do not connect points but travel swiftly in between. The archive, history, memory are collections of points tied to one central point: Man, defined as white, male and rational. In her exhibition with GiG Munich, “The Flamekeepers” Lilian Robl seeks ways of remembering without memory, recording without constructing an archive. Just lines. Only lines.
Lilian Robl (*1990) studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich and at the Ecole de recherche graphique, Brussels, graduating as a master student of Prof. Alexandra Bircken in 2019. Her work was shown in numerous exhibitions: Top Space, Berlin (DE); Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin (DE); fructa, Munich (DE); Wienwoche (AT); Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich (CH); Kunstverein Marburg (DE) as well as at film festivals: Les Instants Vidéo, Marseille (FR); Barcelona International Short Film Festival (ES); GRRL Haus Cinema, Berlin (DE); FILE, São Paulo (BR); Women’s Voices Now, Los Angeles (US); Non- syntax, Tokyo (JP); International Moving Film Festival (IR); Light Mattter Film Festival (US). She has received residencies at the Cité Paris (FR), among others.
Emma Hauck. Ingeborg Bachmann. Rabe Perplexum. Nicht Punkte, sondern Linien. Linien, die keine Punkte verbinden, sondern sich schnell dazwischen bewegen. Das Archiv, die Geschichte, die Erinnerung sind Ansammlungen von Punkten, die mit einem zentralen Punkt verbunden sind: Der Mensch, definiert als weiß, männlich und rational. In ihrer Ausstellung “The Flamekeepers” im GiG Munich sucht Lilian Robl nach Wegen des Erinnerns ohne Gedächtnis, des Aufzeichnens ohne Aufbau eines Archivs. Gerechte Linien. Nur Linien.
Lilian Robl (*1990) hat Freie Kunst an der Akademie der Bildenden Künste München und an der Ecole de Recherche graphique Brüssel studiert und 2019 als Meisterschülerin von Prof. Alexandra Bircken abgeschlossen. Ihre Arbeiten werden in Ausstellungen, z.B. Top Space, Berlin (DE); Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin (DE); fructa, München (DE); Wienwoche (AT); Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich (CH) sowie auf Filmfestivals, z.B. Les Instants Vidéo, Marseille (FR); Barcelona International Short Film Festival (ES); GRRL Haus Cinema, Berlin (DE); FILE, São Paulo (BR); Women’s Voices Now, Los Angeles (US); Non- syntax, Tokyo (JP); International Moving Film Festival (IR); Light Mattter Film Festival (US). Sie erhielt Residenzstipendien unter anderem an der Cité Paris (FR).
GiG 