This exhibition presents old and new work by the artists Gerry Bibby, David Hammons; and Daniela Knorr. It intends to set opacity as a membrane for encounter, or, to hand over to the philosopher Edouard Glissant: “I demand for all the right to opacity. It is not necessary to me to understand the other, that is to reduce the other to my own model of transparency, in order to live and build with that other.” Or, as it may sometimes be the case, conditions permitting: “When you find the word, without limits […] you go crazy shouting it.”
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Two works by American artist David Hammons (b. 1943, Springfield/IL, USA), one of them a collaborative work, on loan from the collection of the S.M.A.K. in Ghent, serve as both backdrop and soundtrack for the exhibition. Both created in the 1990s, they integrate modes of performing and refusal in an elegant manner: Materasso Addormentato (1991, with Bruna Esposito) is a snoring mattress sculpture, fastened in a roll with a tie; his video Phat Free (1995/99) sets the beat, showing a man kicking a can down a New York street, extending Hammons’ studio into the city, where many of his ephemeral works originated, and where echoes of his affinities with histories such as the Black Power movement and Free Jazz reside.Core material for Gerry Bibby’s (b. 1977, Melbourne, AU) activities are, so to say, words and furniture, contextual polarities between which he stimulates processes of exchange that scrutinise values assigned to gender, place, and, of course, art. Collaging sculpture, performance and text, he agitates social and spatial complexes, asking them to behave other to themselves. Here, Bibby arrests revision in the service of the now, this exhibition, by placing it in a fixed period of time, where the both near and distant past haunt the passage of the year 2015. This year will comprise of 13 moons, and if the opening credit to Fassbinder's 1978 film "In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden" were to be taken as truth, these years witness catastrophe for those who experience them. The series of lampshade sculptures by Bibby, HOWL (2015); which together form a spatial concrete poem are designated as moments of shadow around the nine full moons already passed this year.This materialisation of work by Daniela Knorr follows, in sculptural terms, the logics of a participative, process-oriented and speculative mould. Just like Lacan's little a it opens space for imagination. One piece proposed by the artist is expected to be on display from October 14, which is according to the travel schedule of its current owner Prof. Dr. Markus Gabriel, Bonn, documentation provided near the exhibition entrance.This is the last issue within Autocenter’s exhibition series “Re-Discoveries”, and is curated by Martin Germann, with the assistance of Ory Dessau.Curated by Martin GermannText: Autocenter, BerlinPhotos: Autocenter, Berlin
