PRAXIS: NEW VENUE FOR ART OPENS
Gerard Byrne
31 August–15 September: Recent works
19–29 September: Older works
2–20 October: Early works
23 October–17 November: Around that time
20 November–14 December: Just before that
Jutta Koether
31 August–6 October: Viktoria
12 October–3 November: Luise
7 November–14 December: Isabell
Opening on 31 August 2013, PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art is a new not-for-profit venue for international contemporary art and research in Berlin. Situated in a two-story 200-square-meter former community building, PRAXES presents half-year cycles of consecutive exhibition modules, papers, and live activities revolving around two unassociated artistic practices.
For the inaugural exhibition cycle, PRAXES presents two parallel strings of exhibitions by Gerard Byrne (Dublin/Copenhagen) and Jutta Koether (Berlin/New York).
Gerard Byrne uses photographic, video, and live art to explore the ambiguities inherent in revisiting the legacies of cultural forms such as theater, photography, and magazines. Engaging ideas of episodic patterns and the temporality of reconfiguration—found throughout Byrne's practice—the extended duration of display at PRAXES is announced in a timetable that loosely references, directs, and annotates the shifting works on show. Organized as a reverse chronological journey, the timetable soon reveals itself as a scripted gesture of staged surprise encounters and performed interpretations—as is often the case in Byrne's transformation of historical sources. Starting with the multi-channel video work Subject (2009), the cycle at PRAXES is the first extensive exhibition of Byrne's work in Berlin.
In 2007, Byrne represented Ireland at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Other recent presentations of the artist's work include dOCUMENTA (13) and a survey at Whitechapel Gallery, London, which will travel to Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, in the fall of 2013. Byrne lives in Dublin and is a professor at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.
Jutta Koether's unique approach to painting can best be described as multipurpose. Through her more than twenty-year investigation of the language, history, and relevance of this medium, Koether has continuously crossed into other fields of expertise to challenge, layer, extend, and revisit gestures on canvas.
At PRAXES, two sculptures and a gouache from 2013 become the centerpieces in a triptych exhibition structure – and the starting point of a speculative dossier, extending into Koether's vast practice. The works—titled Viktoria, Luise, and Isabelle—were previously exhibited together under the title "The Double Session" in London, exploring Derrida's notion of doubling from his eponymous 1969 lecture.
While placing these exhibitions in the artist's ongoing performative reading of this text, this doubled double also marks a homecoming as the works return to the German context to which they are intricately linked.
Koether has exhibited extensively, including venues such as Tate Modern, London, the Whitney and São Paulo Biennials, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and, latest, a touring show at Dundee Contemporary Arts and Arnolfini, Bristol. Koether lives in Berlin and New York and works as a professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HfbK) in Hamburg.
About PRAXES
PRAXES invites audiences to collectively and critically explore the range and diversity of artistic practice today by gradually presenting artworks, production processes as well as related material in cumulative display, text, and event formats.
Every six months, PRAXES focuses on two artistic practices in parallel, presenting and correlating three or more exhibitions (a cycle) investigating both broader strokes and odd corners of the practice of each artist. Displays of older works, collaborations, performances, unfinished business, failed ideas, archives, and other material allow for a slow surfacing of recurring themes, materials, and methods as well as contradictions and productive disruptions across a body of work. As simultaneous outlets for the same investigation, PRAXES presents a multitude of short-term explorations (Parlors) and writings (Papers).
The PRAXES Parlors are live events, such as performances, discussions, film screenings, talks, and workshops, led by local and international voices from across the cultural field. The PRAXES Papers are a steady accumulation of edited, free, downloadable material sourced from and around the artistic practice. As a growing journal of articles, commissioned commentary, documentation, ephemera, and more, PRAXES Papers aim to be an alternative resource for thinking of and around artistic processes and presentations today.
PRAXES is a registered not-for-profit institution founded and directed by Rhea Dall and Kristine Siegel.
PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art
Alexandrinenstraße 118-121
10969 Berlin, Germany
www.praxes.de
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 1–6pm
Image Credits: Jutta Koether, Luise (detail), 2013. Polyethylene, clear resin, mixed materials, 20 x 90 x 90 cm. Courtesy of Campoli Presti.
