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Paul Pfeiffer | Three Figures in a Room

30 March – 23 April 2016
Opening: Tuesday, 29 March, 2016, 6-9 pm

carlier |gebauer is pleased to present a solo exhibition with Paul Pfeiffer. Three Figures in a Room will be the artist’s first exhibition in Berlin since his landmark show at Hamburger Bahnhof in 2009. The Saints used the con­troversial 1966 World Cup Final between England and West Germany as a sort of “found text” through which to stage the fundamental dynamics of crowds, nationalism, religion, and mass media spectacle. Pfeiffer’s work reconfigured this contested sporting event through radically reducing the scale of the image and isolating the sounds of the game—spatializing spectacle as a con­dition to be inhabited.

Pfeiffer’s forthcoming exhibition with carlier | gebauer extends the art­ist’s investigation of the aura that surrounds certain mass media events and images. While The Saints diminished the heroism of players in an iconic historical match by isolating them and shrinking them, Three Figures in a Room proposes a return to the large-scale image. The exhibition will present three new videos that, when viewed together, distill a contemporary boxing match to its essential elements: movement, light, and sound. The show rec­reates the much-touted match between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. Billed as the “fight of the century,” the event was held in Las Vegas last spring. It was predicted to be the highest grossing boxing match of all time and nearly half of all households in Pacquiao’s native Philippines tuned into to watch the fight. By focusing on how the image renders the boxers ob­jects rather than subjects, Pfeiffer stages the “otherness” of the image through an artistic investigation that examines, resists, and exploits spec­tacle by honing in on and isolating representational codes that otherwise tend to enthrall the viewer.

Paul Pfeiffer (b.1966) lives and works in New York City. Selected solo ex­hibitions include Vitruvian Figure, Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila; Jerusalem, Artangel, London; The Saints, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; and Monologue, MUSAC, León. Pfeiffer’s works have also been included in international, large-scale exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, Bi­ennale of Sydney, Busan Biennale, Cairo Biennale, and Whitney Biennial, as well as group exhibitions at prestigious venues such as Castello Rivoli, Tu­rin; LACMA, Los Angeles; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; 2001:49th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy; P.S.1/MoMA, New York; Haus der Kunst, Munich; and Mori Museum, Tokyo.

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Tarik Kiswanson | Contact Sheet

30 March – 23 April 2016
Opening: Tuesday, 29 March, 2016, 6-9 pm

carlier | gebauer is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Germany of the Swedish-Palestinian artist Tarik Kiswanson. Currently based between Paris and New York, Kiswanson’s practice is shaped by a sculptural vocabu­lary inscribed with the hybridization of Middle Eastern cultural heritage and Western modernism, of art and the artisanal. From an intense process of interbreeding enigmatic works emerge, inciting ceaseless tension between their two poles. In light of this, its final signification remains in constant suspense.

Contact Sheet’s genesis lies in photographs dating from the 1970s document­ing the family life of the artist. The embroidery of traditional costumes present in the photographs becomes the central subject of the work. Playing with a shift of scale, from the microscopic to the monumental, Tarik Kiswan­son discharges the motifs from their folkloric references. Removed of all original contexts, the raw essence of his imagery opens up a multitude of interpretations. Quasi-abstract from this point on, the magnified details of the embroideries illustrate the circulation of certain primary forms across different époques and geographical regions, thus providing an unspoken pro­gression from the subjective and personal to the objective.
Constituted of large sheets of metal, cut polished to a mirror finish, the works retain imprints of the process of their fabrication: like large-scale weaving, the sheets are superimposed and intermingled. Infra-thin, sharp-edged, and rigid, these hollowed reliefs constitute ghostly memories of the artist’s entire cultural heritage: they are a contact sheet. Evoking kinetic art, the sculptures vibrate at the faintest breeze or touch. Their oxidized surfaces are the result of welding, but are also accented by contact with the body, thus inscribing the sculptures within a temporality: always in movement, never rigid, and potentially perishable.

Tarik Kiswanson (b. 1986) lives and works in Paris. He studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and at the Ecole Nationale Supéri­eure des Beaux-Arts de Paris where he graduated in 2014 with jury honours. He will have forthcoming exhibitions at the Musée Régional d’Art Contem­porain de Sérignan, at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris, at Beffroi de Montrouge, and at the Fondation Albert Gleizes in Sablon. He is also cur­rently exhibiting his work at the Contemporary Art Centre of Clichy, Pavil­lon Vendôme in Paris. Notable previous exhibitions include: The Housebreak­er, curated by Gaël Charbeau at Riga Art Space, Riga, Lettonie, COMPOSITIONS at Metropolitan Art Society in Beirut, curated by Daniele Balice, Les Mains Libres, curated by Laurent Jacob, Espace 251 Nord Liège, Belgium, and Les voyageurs, curated by Hou Hanru, at Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France. Tarik Kiswanson is currently in residence at Sèvres, Cité de la Céramique in Paris and at ISCP – International Studio & Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, New York. 


carlier | gebauer
Markgrafenstraße 67
10969 Berlin
Germany
www.carliergebauer.com