Art Show: Boo Ritson - Hotdogs & Heroes

This is an unusual one: The photograph of a painting of a portrait - by simply adding the very artificial looking acryllic colours (paint has never looked so disgustingly plastic; for me a biting take on artificial aspects of American society...) Boo Ritson creates in intricate web of layers and cross-references.

The whole series 'Hotdogs and Heroes' is very conceptual, visually narrating an average day of a professional killer, who comes down to smalltown Nevada to 'do a job' suspecting the air hostess to be the frivolous girl in the bar last night, popping up his collar in the hope to not be reckognised.

Somehow, I immediately thought about Hopper's Nighthawks, and that these characters in this series here could be the a kind of off-spring story behind the famous picture, as if Boo intended to fill the infamous void that iconic painting left behind - 60 years later, as if small town Midwest hasn't moved on, well, it often appears to not have changed that much after all.

Until 29th April, David Risley Gallery, Vyner Street, E2

Artists Anonymous: Alice Straight to Video

We entered a fury cave labyrinth, the kind of installation that reminds you of childhood days. We joked and played around. I took this photo of hers curiously exploring what is in store to feed her exitement around the next corner.

After a minute or so she started to feel uncomfortable, claustrophobic and anxious. She asked the gallery girl for a sort of short cut to get out, cop out. I started to look at the video screens nestled into the white acryllic fur. It dawned on me relatively quickly. This was disturbing stuff - well, not exactly shocking given the first show of artists anonymous in Vyner Street exploring the traumatic side of 'drugs'.


The installation stations were mainly about sex, punch in your face with errected penises or a more subtle, morbid looking aquarium with undefinable gadgets inside. When I cam out on the other side, Katherine and Meghan were already engaged in a discussion on child abuse - the topic of this show. A terrifying corner of society, with no exit door for the victim who often get lurked into sugar-candied rabbit holes layed out by the perpetrators.

Later that day I found the press release on the collective's website and now it gets more shocking, especially being German myself: "In Germany one cannot prosecute against childhood sexual abuse after the age of 28...an infant who can or does not defend itself cannot be the victim of rape, merely of sexual abuse, even when sexual intercourse has taken place...Sexual abuse and Rape are both defined by specific occurrences...The mere memory that it was on Sundays when the mother was at church, is not enough...Germany’s leading organisation for adult survivors of sexual abuse, advises victims against prosecution, as it claims this is too traumatic for the victims..."

Incredibly important stuff. Disturbing content, encouraging format, strong message. From the outside this installation looks like a deconstructed pile of rubble, just like the life of the survivors.

Until 22 April, E2 9DG

Art Show: Artists Anonymous - Drugs

What happens when you gaze at an image and then suddenly look away? You see an after image, but this time the colours are inverted.

According to wikipedia (on 22 January 2007, 23.20 GMT) "afterimages are caused when the eye's photoreceptors, primarily known as cone cells, adapt from the overstimulation and lose sensitivity".

The latter - overstimulation and loss of sensitivity - have something to do with the content of the artworks displayed in this new space in Vyner Street: drugs. Artists Anonymous is a Berlin-originated group of 'clean' drug addicts who have moved to London to show their fascinating art. It's a clever and playful idea on a serious issue, the impact of drugs, and the successful battle to get rid of them:

First, there is the painting (picture at top here), depicting a hallucinatory scene of drug-infested sex, nonsense, games, dreams and nightmares - through inverted colours. It feels cold, like being 'on turkey' (detox) or in the wrong movie, on the wrong party, the wrong side of life. Then, the painting is photographed (picture above), and the process of shooting on negative film refers to the afterimage turning yellow into blue and green into magenta etc - negative into positive. Now the figures seem to be made of real flesh, there is warm glow, it feels better. However, the content is the same. But since the negative also shows the image mirror-invertedly, the photograph now appears to be wrong side (if it had text in there you'd realize). Right or wrong? Positive or Negative? That is the question....that survivors of drug addiction can only assess and answer for themselves.

Having tried to help a friend at university getting clean from heroin and cocain, I got some painfully close insights into this matter. I truly hope for Maya and her colleagues that the afterimage remains their daily reality, and that their memory of surreal hallucinations remain afterthoughts on seeing the wrong coloursof life. (Well done, and good luck for the next five years and beyond!)

Art is better than any LSD! Vyner Street, E2

Art Show: Andrew Bracey - Freianlage

I love animals, preferably in free nature, rather than in a Zoo. That said, the Zoo plays a pivotal role in saving certain species from being extinct (think Panda) as well as educating humans about animals so that we take better care about our little (and big) friends.

Andrew's Freianlage is about Zoos and our relation to it. Just as observing social interaction of monkey tribes in their cages is like being shown the mirror of human behaviour (funny, sad, nasty, cheeky, egotistic, altruistic etc.), this well-curated show in this small space in Hackney exposes the imbalance of power in the battle for living space between our globalized consumer society and the billions of other species around.

His wall installation "Migrate" uses found objects, discarded, binned, thrown away, taken out of the consumer cycle, as a substitute for canvas or paper to paint birds in miniature scale. As a whole, a microcosm juxtaposing icons of nature (kingfisher, flock, robin etc.) with standard leftovers of the waste economy (cigarette boxes, screwed paper, plastic and other usual suspects). Looking at the individual piece, it is a sad yet motivated cry to mankind that battling for habitat is a zero-sum game - that our earthmates are loosing right now.

The monkey in the magnifying glass device, which looks like a robot from a car manufacturing assembly line, reminds me of the safari holiday quest: on the one hand there are the 'bad' types that leave a terrible ecological foodprint, on the other hand there are responsible tourists that understand and respect the animals' need for some remains of privacy, thus, only watching and filming animals from a decent distance with the help of this technological achievement.

My personal favourite is a tiger painted in oil on the tail end of a game dart - penetrated into a corner of the gallery walls. The arrow/dart missile is still the dominating hunting form for indigineous tribes in the rain forest across the globe - silent, efficient and deadly - just like the tiger itself who is known and respected as the king of the jungle, and only killed if attacking a human.

A real discovery! Until 28 January 2007 at Transition Gallery, E8

Art Show: Ricky Swallow

On my last exploration tour through Hackney, I found a couple of good shows in Vyner Street, the most impressive being Ricky Swallow's wood carvings. The sculptures of this Australian artist and Venice Biennale representative are a result of extraordinary craftsmanship. There are arms, shoes and other small scales pieces mounted on the wall or positioned on the floor.

My favourite is 'Younger than Yesterday', a skull that grows barnacles out of its vessel. Both outstandingly beautiful and disturbing at the same time. Swings and balances. Giving and taking. "The deterioration of the skull's former life becomes the root from which the barnacle's macabre decoration pushes forward and flourishes." It definetely invokes some scary thoughts on brain tumour and the notion of getting older.

What a shame that the gallery rep on the day was very uncommunicative - otherwise a nice conversation could have blossomed...(post note: as happened at the current exhibition:-)


Until 21 December 2006 at Modern Art

Art Show: Pierre Klossowski

"Claiming not to be a writer, philosopher, or even an artist, "but first, foremost, and always, a monomaniac," Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001) has long remained a cultish figure..."

When you enter the ground floor of the Whitechapel gallery and gaze at the ginormeous drawings and their three-dimensional sculptural elaborations, your first association might be 'this must have been De Sade's artistic dream - interpreted by Freud on LSD: Stags do business with Robin Hood looking women, young pageants make out with old ladies, and above all and through out the show there is an eerie non-explicit athmosphere of erotic violence. You don't feel as observing an act, but moments before it happens, when one might pause to give his or her rationale a chance to win over dark desires in the hope to withold yourself and not do it.

Oh, what? Do I sound weird? Well, I somehow feel surrealised by this double-bill of phantasmagic art.

Whitechapel, until 23 November, 2006

Art Show: Hans Bellmer

Yeah - Finally! An art show of this (of course) German Maniac. I was waiting for this opportunity for almost 15 years. And now the great Whitechapel locked away in the East End displays the etchings, drawings and photo documentations of his famous dolls.What's all my raving about? Well, for those who didn't come across this hidden champion of Surealism so far (no he was never as accomplished as Dalior Ernst) this is the real surealist stuff, kinky, horrible, boundless, childlike, erotic and just a bit C-R-A-Z-Y. So if you think the Chapman brothers were revolting (in the 1990s!!!) and you would like to see how somebody was 10 times more pushing the boundaries of taste and conventions, then go and see what this man created as early as the - YES - 1930s before he had to flee Hitler and his Nazi cronies as an "Entarteter Kunstler".

Whitechapel, until 23 November, 2006

Art Show: Page 3 Girls at Fabrications, E8

I went to Hackney today to document E8 as part of my new London post codes project when I came across this little space on Broadway Market. Some 50 to 60 Page Three Girls water colors on paper with different grades of abstraction and naturalism and hung in a grid make a provocative yet pleasing installation.

An invisible statement is expressed through a conceptual and ‘aesthetic-political’ pricing system putting value tags along definitions like ‘ugly wet’. Jody, the artist told me that she wants people to pay up to £200 for the rather beautiful pieces with realistic brushes while the more dodgy looking papers with freak-like faces or lack of personality details can make it home from £40. I am happy to have picked my favorite piece first...

In my view, this work is a well-done sarcastic take on an infamous institution of British popular culture uncovering a macho-driven fetish of British men that has somewhat outstayed emancipation waves and feminist agenda of the 21st century as well as the abundance of free and 24/7 accessible erotica of the internet. Maybe this series makes you start wondering: Who are these ‘sexy bodies’ anyhow? But be careful: They might even have a personality!

This show officially opens on Thursday evening, 6th April and lasts only until Sunday afternoon.

The space is opposite of My Life in Art on Broadway Market which feels like an artisan enclave in E8 that is not yet imperatively hip as Hoxton but still has a rather work-in-progress feel with butcher-cafes, art spaces to rent and little bookshops. For lunch go to La Vie en Rose at the corner and eat the Filet which is delicious!