Per Albin #5: Écarts_Stimmen, distances, rehearsals, ... Hanako Geierhos, Florian Schmidt

November 17 to December 17, 2019

With PER ALBIN #5: Écarts voices, distances, rehearsals, ... by Hanako Geierhos and Florian Schmidt, the fifth and last project that will take place within the framework of PER ALBIN - An Exhibition Project, opens on November 16.

By means of performative sculpture (Hanako Geierhos) and plastic painting (Florian Schmidt), the two Berlin-based artists inquire into the status of public, private and social space and the significance of objects and images for the emergence of new communication channels and social relationships. The term "écarts", which comes from the French philosopher and sinologist Francois Jullien, plays a central role in this context. According to Jullien, it is écarts/spaces that we maintain between ourselves and others, between one culture and another, that bring the "common" to light. The works of the two artists deal with these distances in a variety of ways.

Spaces or interspaces are constitutive elements for Florian Schmidt's pictorial spaces, composed of pieces of cardboard and oscillating between two- and three-dimensionality, which are essentially determined by the painterly. The resulting interplay of lines can be read as an abstract, space-creating structure, within which the écarts/spaces formed by the plates can be perceived as both a break and a connecting line between neighbourhoods and surroundings.

In a different way, Hanako Geierho's "distances" are created when she lays out her fabric pictures ("velas") made of used, colourful surf sails in a performative act with random participants on the Bergtaidingweg. The joint rolling out of the fabrics resembles a social intervention, within which the fabric roll itself creates the "distance" between the participants, as well as forming their common intersection. The resulting image on the ground is a "common" image co-designed by all helpers. It will be created together on the day of the exhibition opening and can be understood as a temporary, artistic platform for new forms of exchange in the Per-Albin-Hansson-Siedlung.

The resulting documentary photographs of the performative act will be shown with a time "gap" on the backs of the display cases on Bergtaidingweg, which have been kept free for this purpose. The exhibition trail opens with the respective front sides of the showcases, which present the joint project of the two artists: as structuring the public (social) space (the abstract paintings by Florian Schmidt), and changing it performatively (the "velas" action by Hanako Geierhos based on past performances in various urban spaces).

The store at EKAZENT functions as a "store window" with depth, which the two artists arrange with space-creating structures, as they can be seen on site, in order to place them in a location- and context-sensitive tension relationship with their own works.