Animals on my mind

Julia Klemm, Zuza Piekoszewska

21.10 – 6.11.2022

Lothringer 13 Studio, Lothringer Str. 13, 81667 München

Animals on my mind, 2022, installation view

Zuza Piekoszewska, Old body, 2020, bioplastic, copper spray paint

Zuza Piekoszewska, The nest, 2022, jute, bioplastic

Zuza Piekoszewska, I’d rather not open my eyes, 2022, mixed
media, fabric, fibre, jute

Zuza Piekoszewska, Ganglions, 2021, bioplastic

Zuza Piekoszewska, Home for troubled eggs, 2022, mixed media

Julia Klemm, pack (series), 2022, ceramic, pigments, dimensions
variable

Zuza Piekoszewska, Superrock, 2022, mixed media

Zuza Piekoszewska, Serene morning on the cornfied, 2022, mixed
media

Zuza Piekoszewska, The angular dog, 2022, mixed media

Zuza Piekoszewska, Complex problems, 2022, fibre on canvas

Last night I tried to think of the first animal I can remember. My grandmother’s black, shaggy dog perhaps? Or earlier, as my mother would say, the jellyfish that stung me on my wrist. I was only two then. Or earlier still I remember the fish on the beach I would make out of the warm sand. But maybe I am thinking about this wrong, maybe it is not about the actual animals I might or might not remember, but rather that all memories belong to the animal kingdom. Maybe memories are like animals.

First of all, there are the individual memories of different things that happened to us, personal memories like family pets, domesticated. Zuza Piekoszewska shows a small landscape of fields in the early morning mist as described to her by her parents. Elsewhere she remakes a kind of very specific dish cloth her mother used in mid-90s Poland, pastel, striped, homely. Julia Klemm’s lions do not prowl but play around the rubble like kittens. The lions though are a different type of memory. They belong not just to us, but to our culture, much like in the taxonomist’s biological classification, a species belongs to a genus. These animals are ordered along evolutionary lines, significant events of our shared past marking out a historical trajectory. These lions that Julia Klemm gathers, derives from 3D scans of bronze and stone lions dotted around European capitals, traditional symbols of strength, courage and nobility in our Judeo-Christian tradition.

Finally there are the memories of the pack, memories like the swarm of cicadas that emerge all together and so suddenly, after 17 years of underground sleep. History has no place for such memories; this kind of animal is missing from the taxonomist’s classification systems. It is less about individuals, identification and contextualisation and more about how to think the animal as already a population. Memories are never single – there is never the one lion. An animal before it is this or that animal, my animal, yours and ours, is an animal like another, but also different. I mean lions as the same but also as mutants, the repetition of genetic material always harbouring mutation. These memories of the pack are always unknowingly carried with us. I am a product of memories I do not even remember; we are a multiplicity of memories that history cannot contain. The most interesting things happen in between the lines, in shared proximities where the discernibility of points disappears. As Deleuze and Guattari write,

The line-system … of becoming is opposed to the point-system of memory. Becoming is the movement by which the line frees itself from the point, and renders points indiscernible…(Thousand Plateaus, 294)

Here becoming is an anti-memory. To really learn how to remember animals, we must first forget.

Magdalena Wisniowska, 2022

Animals on my mind

Julia Klemm, Zuza Piekoszewska

21.10 – 6.11.2022

Lothringer 13 Studio, Lothringer Str. 13, 81667 München

Julia Klemm, o. T., 2022, ceramics, pigment, 16 x 17 x 35 cm

When I try to recall something or other, I do not immediately think of animals, though perhaps I should. I think of things that happened and other things that happened before that: points on an ever distant timeline. A line of evolution, of successful pairings, of inherited traits. But what about all those other things I don’t remember? Unclear, awkward pairings, stolen encounters in the night? Different species, no offspring, yet also a closeness and an intimacy.

Animals on my mind is the second of GiG Munich’s ‘Re-collection’ series of exhibitions at Lothringer 13 Studio, featuring the work of Julia Klemm and Zuza Piekoszewska, in collaboration with Lectwo, Poland.

Julia Klemm (*1983 in Backnang) lives and works in Munich. 2010 she began her art studies at the AdBK Munich with Prof. Norbert Prangenberg and graduated 2017 as a master student with Markus Karstieß. In 2018 she received a scholarship from the Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Culture, Science and Art for a six-month stay at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. She has exhibited in Munich, Cologne, Düsseldorf and internationally, in New Jersey, Rome and Beirut. Klemm is represented in the collection of contemporary art of the Federal Republic of Germany and is currently participating in a group exhibition in the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn in 2022.

Zuza Piekoszewska (*1996) completed an BFA in Photography at the University of the Arts Poznan and a MFA in Fine Art Media in the Szczecin Art Academy. At Łęctwo Poznań she had solo exhibitions ‘You are a little soul carrying about a corpse’ in 2020, and ‘Ready to hatch’ in 2019. Her recent group exhibitions include ‘The Discomfort of Evening’, Zachęta, Warsaw, 2022, ‘Material fatigue’ at the 17th International Triennial of Tapestry in Łódź, 2022, ‘We breathe the remains of everything that was’ organised by GiG Munich and Łęctwo at Lothringer 13 Studio, Munich, 2022, ’The earth is flat again’ at the Museum of Art in Łódź, 2021 and ‘Lebenswelt’ at the Bovisamare Via Mercantini, Milan, 2021.

Animals on my mind

Wenn ich versuche, mich an etwas zu erinnern, denke ich nicht sofort an Tiere, obwohl ich das vielleicht sollte. Ich denke an Dinge, die passiert sind, und andere Dinge, die davor passiert sind: Punkte auf einer immer weiter entfernten Zeitlinie. Eine Linie der Evolution, der erfolgreichen Paarungen, der vererbten Eigenschaften. Aber was ist mit all den anderen Dingen, an die ich mich nicht erinnere? Unklare, ungeschickte Paarungen, gestohlene Begegnungen in der Nacht? Verschiedene Spezies, keine Nachkommen, aber auch eine Nähe und Intimität.

Animals on my mind ist die zweite Ausstellung der Reihe “Re-collection” von GiG Munich im Lothringer 13 Studio, in der die Arbeiten von Julia Klemm und Zuza Piekoszewska gezeigt werden.

Julia Klemm (*1983 in Backnang) lebt und arbeitet in München. Sie beginnt 2010 ihr Kunststudium an der AdBK München bei Prof. Norbert Prangenberg und macht 2017 als Meisterschülerin bei Markus Karstieß ihren Abschluss. 2018 erhält sie ein Stipendium des Bayerischen Staatsministeriums für Bildung und Kultur, Wissenschaft und Kunst für einen sechsmonatigen Aufenthalt an der Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Sie stellte bisher in München, Köln, Düsseldorf sowie international u. a. in New Jersey, Rom und Beirut aus.Klemm ist in der Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschlandvertreten und 2022 an einer Gruppenausstellung in der Bundeskunsthalle Bonn beteiligt.

Zuza Piekoszewska (*1996) absolvierte einen BFA in Fotografie an der Universität der Künste Poznan und einen MFA in Fine Art Media an der Kunstakademie Szczecin. Im Łęctwo Poznań hatte sie die Einzelausstellungen “You are a little soul carrying about a corpse” im Jahr 2020 und “Ready to hatch” im Jahr 2019. Zu ihren jüngsten Gruppenausstellungen gehören “The Discomfort of Evening”, Zachęta, Warschau, 2022, “Material fatigue” auf der 17. Internationalen Triennale der Tapisserie in Łódź, 2022, “Wir atmen die Reste von allem, was war”, organisiert von GiG Munich und Łęctwo im Studio Lothringer 13, München, 2022, “Die Erde ist wieder flach” im Kunstmuseum in Łódź, 2021 und “Lebenswelt” im Bovisamare Via Mercantini, Mailand, 2021.

LOST AND FOUND

Julia Klemm, Justin Lieberman, Lilian Robl, Pat Shoulder, Johanna Strobel

30.07 – 2.09.2021

Lost and Found, 2021, installation view

Lost and Found, 2021, installation view

Lost and Found, 2021, installation view

Lost and Found, 2021, installation view

Lost and Found, 2021, installation view

Johanna Strobel, False Friends, 2021, acrylic mirrors, plastic, glass, aluminium, clockworks

(clockwise and counterclockwise), LEDs, USB extension cords, digital timer, size variable (each approx. 25

x 25 x 5 cm)

Julia Klemm, untitled, 2020, ceramic, glaze, second-hand ceramic leopards, 76 x 30 x 33 cm

Julia Klemm, untitled, 2020, ceramic, glaze, second-hand ceramic leopards, 76 x 30 x 33 cm

Lost and Found, 2021, installation view,

Julia Klemm, untitled, 2021, ceramic, glaze, second-hand ceramic leopard, 32 x 28 x 33 cm

Julia Klemm, untitled, 2021, ceramic, glaze, second-hand ceramic leopard, 32 x 28 x 33 cm

Julia Klemm, untitled, 2021, ceramic, glaze, second-hand ceramic leopard, 32 x 28 x 33 cm

Pat Shoulder, Sun Umbrella, 2020, Steel, paint, print on textile

Lost and Found, 2021, installation view

Justin Lieberman, Obscure Readability, 2020, ceramic, glass and pedestal with sand, 41 x 22 x 12 cm (Courtesy of Galerie Christine Mayer)

Justin Lieberman, Obscure Readability, 2020, ceramic, glass and pedestal with sand, 41 x 22 x 12 cm (Courtesy of Galerie Christine Mayer)

Lilian Robl,Winning Hearts and Minds, 2016, 5 min 55 sec (plus textile bag and assorted metal objects)

A naturalist, specifically an 18th century one, likes to classify. After an expedition to the jungles of some remote land he – and it is almost always a he – takes out his specimens and begins to compare. This one looks like the second, the third does not, the fourth has some features of the first two, but also some traits seen in the third. He makes up categories and puts labels on boxes, marking the time and place at which the specimens were found. He then takes out a scalpel and cuts them open in order to examine their inner structure. Here are the muscles and these are the breathing organs. This is the skin, and under the microscope he can see the epidermal structure. Visually speaking, the naturalist proceeds mimetically, by finding patterns and organising resemblances. He looks and compares. He judges accordingly.

There are however animals that escape the naturalist’s grasp. Fictional beings like vampires and werewolves, who live in darkness of our imaginations and spread by infecting others with their poisonous bite – these can be easily dismissed as unworthy of our serious attention. Viruses and pandemics less so. A virus can hardly be deemed alive, reproducing only in the host’s body. Although it mutates, it does not develop to evolve into ever more complex organisms. While it can be placed into groups of similar viruses, it eludes the classificatory system with its orders, families, genera and species.

The exhibition ‘Lost and Found’ has a slightly dystopian, even post-apocalyptic quality, of various objects assembled in haste and then disregarded, leftovers from a Mad-Max film set. A preview exhibition, it consists of artists who will hopefully be part of GiG Munich’s ‘Thinking Nature’ 2022 programme, which examines the relationship between man and nature, as it presents itself in thought. These artists were selected because their practices are not of class and order, but rather of mutation and infection. We see this most in Julia Klemm’s sculpture were kitsch ceramic animals are broken up and then reassembled, set precariously on their rickety plinths. Pat Shoulder’s work is collaborative, a result of an exchange of letters between the two artists during the first lockdown. The order of time is put into question with Johanna Strobel’s installations and logic disintegrates in Lilian Robl’s videos. There is a celebration of nature’s structures in the glass turtle shells of Justin Lieberman but again this order is not that of the naturalist. As with the others, it is a viral order of an unnatural kind.