Laura Preston
And other works
February 23 - March 22, 2020
Current:
Laura Preston
And other works
February 23 - March 22, 2020
Archive:
Paolo Thorsen-Nagel
Transparent Things
Oct 12 - Nov 10, 2019
Marta Riniker-Radich
Shredding Paper
Jul 7 - Aug 4, 2019
Same time, same place
Andrew J Burford
Richard Frater
Friedemann Heckel
Joe Hoyt
Cameron Irving
Mirak Jamal
Nuri Koerfer
Zac Langdon-Pole
Raphael Linsi
Sam ML
Pakui Hardware
Tamen Perez
Max Ruf
Richard Sides
Anne de Vries
Angharad Williams
Feb 24 - Mar 31, 2019
Onda Podre | Rotten Wave
Miguel Cunha
Stephan Dillemuth
Alisa Heil
Silvestre Pestana
Organized by
Uma Certa Falta de Coerência | A certain Lack of Coherence
Oct 10 - Nov 18, 2018
Ramaya Tegegne
That someone else has underlined
May 16 - June 13, 2015
Jannis Marwitz
Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben
Feb 21 - March 22, 2015
Aaron Ritschard
A cut and what it might
Jan 10 - Feb 7, 2015
The Bicycle Thief
The Bicycle Thief
Nov 22 - Dec 21, 2014
Laura Preston
And other works
February 23 - March 22, 2020
Several years ago I was walking across Gleisdreieck in summertime Berlin with a painting in hand, uncovered, made between the writing and editing. The park was scattered with people and framed by the quick buildings of Potsdamer Platz, a moment when the skyline opens up in this wide city. It was kind of a performance to be carrying that canvas with its marks that extended to the fabric I was wearing. I felt altered by it, and the unexpected display of a work in transit, unannounced.
This got me thinking about Adrian Piper’s formative action: those images of her walking down Broadway, Manhattan, wearing white paint and with the sign “Wet Paint”, part of her “Catalysis” series. It marks a moment in her practice when she is transitioning from a minimalist interest in the grid to her conceptual take on the art object as a body that challenges positions of the subject and the subjected. She was becoming politicized.
Over this unusually mild winter I have been reading Hannah Arendt’s ideas on the vita activa—her political writing seems more relevant than ever. One of her thoughts that sticks like a painted gesture is how she outlines the human conditions of labor, work, and action as having collapsed to such a degree of efficiency that the vitality of each has become diluted, a fading humanity. She also wrote about the active life of thought. Our responsibility to be plural.
On the invitation to show my paintings, those that I live with, rarely seen, I was prompted to consider how they connect to my other work and tasks. They are similar to textiles—materially interested, foregrounded backgrounds, textural. They were also made while thinking about the dimensions of being human, of painting.
List of works:
Untitled (Athens–Berlin), 2020
Acrylic on cotton, sandpaper
90 x 60 cm
Untitled (Frankfurt am Main), 2018–19
Oil and acrylic on linen
55 x 45 cm
Untitled (Japan, Botanischer Garten Berlin), 2019
Acrylic on linen
45 x 55 cm