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Sparwasser HQ Presents “Every Story Tells A Picture” 19. August to 17. September 2006
Vernissage am Freitag, from 18.08.2006 to 19-23hr. Graphic design, advertising, and publicity have different national histories and cultures which shape their professional identities. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu described this as ‘habitus’, his term for ways of living and thinking which define social groups. Participants in the art world are also subject to a habitus. What occurs when these two fields interact? In a business where the disavowal of commercial intent is common and the act of buying and selling often appears parenthetical, the function of advertising and public relations in the art market often appears mysterious and paradoxical. What purpose do these practices play? By appropriating aspects of advertising, publicity, and architectural convention, “Every Story Tells A Picture” seeks to interrogate the complex connection between the symbolic economy of art galleries, in which publicity and advertising play a crucial role, and the real economy of the art market. As a point of departure, a proposition was put forward—what would happen if the roles were inverted and artists were able to “represent” galleries? How would artists themselves design gallery print ads? Some artists responded with ads of a speculative nature. Nicoline van Harskamp appropriated the T-mobile house graphic style in her advertisements, the Norwegian curatorial team, Rakett, write themselves into the Berlin art world by situating shows they have curated abroad within this local context, and show organizer Michael Baers has created a series of public service announcements hosted by several Berlin galleries. Employing strategies of inversion and reversal, others enlarged the proposition with works concerning the architectonic conventions of gallery space, the linkage between fine art and corporate instrumentalization, and the way interviews, press releases, and other modes of public relations have come, both inside and outside the art market, to function as “hard” news content. Eoghan McTigue has reversed the orientation of Sparwasser’s window and door, while the Dutch collaborative, Fucking Good Art, will install photo wallpaper depicting a gallery reception desk in situ. Øystein Aasan’s collages of press clippings and exhibition documentation undermine the status of primary and secondary information, Deborah Ligorio’s videowork considers the normative practices of project spaces as they relate to dominant commercial paradigms, and Christine Würmell’s work is a subtle and strategic deployment of corporate and gallery advertisement strategies. With works that investigate the empirical and discursive dimensions of the commercial art market from many angles, “Every Story Tells a Picture” attempts to illuminate the complex nexus of issues related to the art market’s public relations strategies, and by extension, how these strategies pertain to capitalism and the concept of the speculative market in general. Sparwasser HQ
With works that investigate the empirical and discursive dimensions of the commercial art market from many angles, “Every Story Tells a Picture” attempts to illuminate the complex nexus of issues related to the art market’s public relations strategies, and by extension, how these strategies pertain to capitalism and the concept of the speculative market in general.
Øystein Aasan 1. "Display Unit (Big Muff)", MDF, mirrors
Michael Baers “Public Service Announcements”, collage, laser prints, art magazines “Proposal for Guerilla Marketing for ARTNET.DE”, stencils, paper, red, black and yellow spray paint 1. Judy Liebke, gallerist In the first of two sets of work contributed to the show, Michael Baers has inserted gallery advertisements into mainstream art magazines, keeping them within the context of the publication. They employ recursive strategies, mimicking the design interface of the galleries chosen, but detourning the accustomed usage of gallery advertisement from communicating information (show announcements) to suggesting gallery ads as a space for public service announcements. This usage suggests the liminal space galleries occupy between public and private. In the second, he has created three stencils which are hypothetical guerilla advertisements for the website, artnet.de. The images are taken from the website, portraying well-known individuals at public events in Berlin.
Fucking Good Art (Rob Hamelijnck & Nienke Terpsma) [www.fuckinggoodart.nl]) “Front Office for Sparwasser HQ”, photocopied wallpaper The photocopied front office for Sparwasser HQ (3.92m X 3.18m) is from a series of photographs of Berlin gallery office spaces (büro). It is taken from a publication to be released later this year.
Sasha Huber Sasha Huber (www.ykon.org/saarikko-huber) Advertisement for: “Foto Shop”, black & white glossy photograph The representation of practice and the practice of representation. FOTO SHOP becomes what it is - a celluloid photo print.
Deborah Ligorio (www.deborahligorio.com) "Extract from a conversation about project spaces", 2006, video, 2,22 min.” Deborah Ligorio’s works are often considerations of either social or geographical space, where abstract architectures are redefined through the combination of sound and image. Her video contribution to the exhibition employs the rhetoric of a television commercial advocating the importance of the numerous project /artist-run spaces and wohnungausstellung in the discourse of the Berlin art scene.
For the exhibtion 'Every Story Tells A Picture' I have reversed the orientation of the window and door glass that normally support the exhibition spaces logo, opening times and exhibition information. For the duration of the exhibition this information will only be legible from the inside of the gallery space, the vinyl lettering will be exposed, in reverse form, on the exterior and may become damaged over the course of the exhibition. If this information constitutes the 'on-site' publicity for the exhibition, it also preceeds and frames the works on display. The reversal of the orientation of these elements materialises a broader reversal of the relations of representation that exist between artworks and their exhibition spaces.
Rakett (www.rakett.biz) 1. Korridor: “Rakett Presents: Stuck on a Melting Rock ‘n Rolling”
Petri Saarikko (www.ykon.org/saarikko-huber) 1. Galerie Anselm Dreher: “Same Old Shit Come & Get It! SOLD OUT! VALUE! TOTALLY! In economics the laws of supply & demand control the market, floating in a continous flux of redefinition. Here we have rooms that stand outside conventional paradigm, transcending the artistic goods and services into concrete capital. Within the intersecting curves of power, lies the sharp aesthetics tip of value.
Nicoline van Harskamp (www.vanharskamp.net) 1. Galerie Max Hetzler: Hakan Çelin, “Drawings, Film Installation”,
laser color print
The 4 prints in "Every Story Tells a Picture" are based on existing advertisements for Gallerie Neu, Max Hetzler, Sparwasser HQ and Gallery Berlin/Vonderbank Art Galleries, as found in the most recent edition of Frieze. They were appropriated using the T-mobile house-style with its characteristic magenta shapes and letters, one of the most prominent in Berlin.
“o.T./emptiness” “o.T./emptiness” is a (spatial) arragement of six fragments - from a since 2005 ongoing work complex -collecting, researching and analysing the „peripheral “elements of art exhibitions: such as press releases,gallery reception areas, invitation cards, and advertising. For instance, “Flache Arbeiten”, a reproduction of a “Matisse/Peugeot” ad from the magazine “Art”references a series of works (consisting of monochrome car-lacquer on boards) by Adrian Schiess with the same title. All fragments are positioned in the entrance area ofSparwasser, for
example utilizing the window area –the traditional advertisement/
communication display. Due to another a work using the window space,
in the end, the setting couldn’t be arranged in the original way.
The spatial setting of the fragments create a(complex/multi-layered)
narrative which destabilizes and politicises usually unquestioned conventions
in the art field.
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