Building up
From July 5th to August 3rd, 2008 the exhibition, Building Up signals the opening of a new project space in Berlin: 91mQ kunstraum.
The project space is situated in a former brewery in East Berlin. (click here for details).
The building is currently transforming itself through the presence of numerous workshops, studios and spaces for artistic experimentation into a hub for creative experimentation.The decision to open a project space in this kind of environment places 91mQ in opposition to the current art system of commercial galleries and art fairs.
91mQ places the artist at the heart of the contemporary art debate. The aim of the project is to create links with other sites within the art world. So far a collaborative dialogue has been established with the non-profit space 26cc, in Rome.
91mQ believes in art as a line of thought that is vital to our understanding of the development of the world in which we live. A programme of monthly exhibitions, video screenings, artist's talks and live performances will be implemented in order to examine the role of contemporary art in the world today.The exhibition, Building Up approaches the ideas of development and emergence contingent with the 91mQ project.
The South African artist Colin Allen – (1976) living and working in London and Berlin - presents paintings in which the picture plane has been literally cut through. The process of image construction is apparent in the evidence of material build up on the surface of the paintings. The artist approaches painting as a visual language used to describe an internal narrative. His paintings develop through an obsessive build up of imagery. This process of adding and subtracting material values mirrors metaphorically the erosive action of time on the landscape of memory.
The Italian artist Marco Giani (1973) works with video, sound and digital images. Giani - Italian artist living and working in Berlin - presents a looped video, sourced from the film by Peter Mettler, Gambling, Gods and L.S.D., in which a building explodes and reassembles itself. His interest is in creating emotional links between the audience and the work through the synthesis of image and sound. Giani considers video as a raw material to be assembled and shaped. Marco Giani is a founding member of 91mQ.
Elena Bellantoni (1975) works with video, painting, installation and photography. On display are a series of photographs documenting the stages of reconstruction the exhibition space has gone through. This record serves as an entry point into a space of interior suggestion. Her work oscillates between the internal and the external, with external space being amended and altered in order to correspond with an internal space. Elena Bellantoni comes from Italy and lives and works in Berlin. Elena Bellantoni is a founding member of 91mQ.
Dunia Mauro (1979) comes from Italy and has recently moved to Berlin from London. She works with sculpture, installation, photography and performance. Dunia creates spaces in which her sculpture/objects act as skeletons or fossils recovered from an archive of experience that is simultaneously personal and collective. Her Personages move through these spaces, disappearing then re-emerging somewhere else. Photography and drawing act as witnesses to this passage.
