Alasdair Duncan, Jenny Dunseath, Jonah Gebka, Jane Harris, Melina Hennicker, Steffen Kern, Claudio Matthias Bertolini, Michael Schmidt, Amanda Ure, Magdalena Wisniowska

Opening: Freitag 21. September, 18 – 21 Uhr
22. September – 26. October 2018

 

‘On Repeat’ exhibition view, 2018

 

‘On Repeat’ exhibition view, 2018

 

‘On Repeat’ exhibition view, 2018

 

‘On Repeat’ exhibition view, 2018

 

Jane Harris, Setting Out and Touching Light, 2018, oil on wooden panel, 50 x 50 cm

 

Jane Harris, Setting Out and Touching Light, 2018, oil on wooden panel, 50 x 50 cm

Alasdair Duncan, Magic Bucket, 2018, bucket, rope, potatoes, dimensions variable

Some years ago I hung a bucket from a chain, a little above the ground, in my studio. I thought that perhaps I might find a way to make art from it. I came to my studio one morning, and to my surprise I found the bucket to be full of potatoes. I wondered how this could be? I supposed that someone must have filled the bucket in my absence, but nobody else had ready access to my studio at night. I emptied the bucket at the end of the day, and when I returned the next day, again it was full, almost overflowing with fresh looking potatoes. This strange occurrence repeated itself daily for a week or so. I transplanted the bucket to my living room at home, hung in the same manner, and was astonished to find that when I woke up, the bucket was again full. It was only if I stayed with the bucket through the night that it didn’t fill itself. 

Well, I accepted this superabundant gift, but I’m not a greengrocer, nor do I eat quite so many potatoes, and in any case, I always regarded these potatoes with slight suspicion, since their origin was unknown. They induced wonder, yes, but just a little anxiety too. So eventually I sold the bucket, with it’s extraordinary tuberous fecundity, as art.

I always regretted selling it.

Well, here we are, years later. I decided to revisit that magic bucket, to make a new version. Of course I assumed that this time around it would just be a sham in so far as surely a new bucket wouldn’t create potatoes. With that in mind Magdalena and I bought some potatoes just in case, so that if that old magic weren’t to return, we could fill the bucket. And we agreed to tell you that the bucket had done the job itself. But you know what? Amazingly enough, we left the bucket overnight in the gallery, and it filled itself with potatoes, just like my old bucket had. The potatoes we’d purchased were completely unnecessary. Amazing.

 

‘On Repeat’ installation view, 2018 (Steffen Kern, Alasdair Duncan and Jonah Gebka)

 

Steffen Kern,  o.T. (Aperture), 2018, Kohlestift on paper, 16x28cm

 

Jonah Gebka, Rechen (Engl. Title: Raking), 2018, oil on canvas and MDF, dimensions variable

 

Amanda Ure, Painting 111 and 112, 2018, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm

 

‘On Repeat’ exhibition view, 2018

 

‘On Repeat’ exhibition view, 2018

 

 Jenny Dunseath, Hard Hard Hat Hat, 2018, digital print on silver film

 

Jenny Dunseath, Hard Hard Hat Hat, 2018, digital print on silver film

 

Claudio Matthias Bertolini,  Montsalvar 2 & 3, 2017, spray paint on wax, dimensions variable

 

‘On Repeat’ is GiG Munich’s latest exhibition, featuring work by Alasdair Duncan, Jenny Dunseath, Jonah Gebka, Jane Harris, Melina Hennicker, Steffen Kern, Claudio Matthias Bertolini, Michael Schmidt, Amanda Ure, Magdalena Wisniowska.

The starting point for this show was the paper, ‘Genius and Genesis’ first presented by Magdalena Wisniowska at the 2017 Deleuze and Artistic Research Conference at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent.

As part of her investigation of the concept of originality, she argues that the process of repetition has an original because genetic component. This is not the repetition of the same as found in Walter Benjamin’s work on mechanical reproduction or Sigmund Freud’s discussion of trauma. Rather, it refers to our impulse to repeat, to try, to do something again and again, without thought of an outcome. Repetition in this spirit of Nietzsche and Deleuze, would be an affirmation of difference.

Artists in the exhibition use repetition in their work, not simply as a mechanical device (although this feature is present in Gebka’s or Kern’s investigations of the image in its relation to photography) but as a creative because productive gesture. For Alastair Duncan the act of repeating is miraculous; for Jenny Dunseath, absurd; for Jane Harris and Amanda Ure, the beginning of a long meditative process. In their video, Melina Hennicker and Michael Schmidt demonstrate that it has no boundaries, however much we wish to contain it. It often combined with a destructive quality as demonstrated in work by Claudio Matthias Bertolini. All in order to strip back and begin afresh.

On Repeat Saaltext

Genius_and_Genesis