24.03.11-23.04.11 Tuesday to Saturday, 12.00-18.00
Reception for the artist: Wednesday 23 March, 18.00-20.30
Florencia Almir�n's show Million places to fuck subverts notions of comfort, familiarity and permanence. One might say, it fucks with these notions, in a surreal kind of way. Map (2011) is an old map of Berlin - a familiar and useful tool - onto which a fried egg has been rudely stuck; the egg will transmogrify over the course of the show. Couch (2011) is a piece of comfortable living-room furniture which has been penetrated by a scaffolding pole and thereby hoisted ecstatically off the ground; for good measure, a potted-plant-pot has been jammed into the plush upholstery. Pentagrama II (2010) is a cheapo clothes' dryer that has been taken over by large plush garish fabric worms: an imaginative housewife's worst nightmare. It stands in a room which has been papered with Sky (2011), custom-made wallpaper that perhaps reminds you of what you had for breakfast and of, well, maybe, depending how your synapses are fixed, the need to get fucking. The graphic Million places to fuck, which gives the title to the show, speaks for itself. Almir�n was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina; she lives and works in Berlin. In 2010 she had solo shows at Souterrain, Berlin, and Oellermann Gallery, Berlin. Alexei Kostroma
Home Cosmic Lab
24.03.11-23.04.11 Tuesday to Saturday, 12.00-18.00
Reception for the artist: Wednesday 23 March, 18.00-20.30
Alexei Kostroma's video installation Home Cosmic Lab (2011) investigates and merges into a single poetic image divergent aspects of Russian virility, as symbolised by the eternal flame, a monument to fallen soldiers that burns in the Alexandrov Gardens by the Kremlin, and in the alternative by the tumbler of vodka that is the national drink. In the gallery, a small glass of vodka was fed by a drip, set alight and filmed from above. The constantly evolving and flickering tiny blue flame, and the faceted glass that contains it, is projected, much enlarged, onto a wall of the gallery. The opening of the video installation was accompanied by a performance by the artist. Kostroma was born in Kostroma, Russia; he lives and works in Berlin. His installation UNO is currently on display at the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, Moscow.
