Seizing the Ivory Tower

The participating artists in Seizing the Ivory Tower present new productions, or installations developed specifically for 3½, which are concerned with any aspect of life that eludes general awareness, purposely or inadvertently. The series focuses on stories, occasions and phenomena in the marginal zones of our personal or public lives, but also looks closely at the artistic strategies themselves used for detecting, investigating or revealing these zones.

Over the next few months, KW's assistant curator Nina Mende animates this independent space between the third and fourth floors with emerging and recent artistic positions.

Participating artists: Luisa Puschendorf and Julia Werhahn, Viktorija Rybakova, Frank Sperling, Luca Vanello, and Franziska Wildt.

15.3.–12.4.15
Seizing the Ivory Tower #1: Viktorija Rybakova: Oo, a Preview

In Oo, a Preview, Viktorija Rybakova (born 1989 in Vilnius) choreographs a hypnotic trip through the mental spaces of an exhibition, and its works. The video piece was originally produced as a "preview" for the Lithuanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2013, and leads the viewer through an increasingly deep image world of a playfully unfolding artist book.

Viktorija Rybakova: Oo, a Preview is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania and the Rupert Centre for Art and Education.

17.4.–24.5.15
Opening: 16.4.15, 19–21 h
Seizing the Ivory Tower #2: Luca Vanello

Luca Vanello (born 1986 in Trieste, Italy, lives and works in Berlin) is interested in the condition of the socially excluded and the subtle traces of their existence. In his installations he explores the materialisation of intimate aspects of these realities. At the same time Vanello reflects on prevailing human conditions as a consequence of social and political dynamics through the transformation of individual traces and items. By this means Vanello's compressed, vaporized, erased, or fragmented materials give shape to unknown biographies and conditions between absence and presence.

29.5.–28.6.15
Seizing the Ivory Tower #3: Frank Sperling

With his Monologues from the Bipolar Region, "Private Hermann" turns to the anonymous audience of the Internet in his you youtube videos to talk about life, politics, faith, and repeatedly about his mental illness. In his installation Private Hermann (2014–15), Frank Sperling (born in 1984 in Neustrelitz, lives and works in Berlin) examines not only Hermann's eventful biography, but also the possibilities and limits of representation of internal states, employing a mixture of documentary, pseudo-therapeutic strategies, staged photographs, and videos.

3.7.–2.8.15
Opening: Thu, 2.7.15, 19 h
Seizing the Ivory Tower #4: Werhahn & Puschendorf

Julia Werhahn und Luisa Puschendorf develop a new installation that deals with the ambivalence of public and private spaces. Both artists have been concerned with this topic a for an extended period, and create sensitively, fully composed scenarios, which show different ways in which people arrange their lives, and how they attempt to adapt within it. In their installation Room No. 3, the visitor encounters a sort of futuristic lobby: flooded with light, the sculptures are presented behind glass, and seem to enclose the conserved past and at the same time also a promising future. The room is an exhibition space and a waiting room at once. Whether the art or the viewer is at the center of attention is a question left unanswered.

7.8.–6.9.15
Opening: Thu, 6.8.15, 19 h
Seizing the Ivory Tower #5: Franziska Wildt: To the Circus

The starting point for Franziska Wildt's installation To the Circus is an unexpected visit to a Shanghai nightclub which presents contemporary art as one among many forms of entertainment in a multi-level building. Wallpaper printed with a documentary photograph of the nightclub's karaoke-bar becomes the backdrop for the artist's photographs and a video work, which address processes of reification. The video's sound comes for example from biopics about artists, in which their identities become products of the cultural industry.

Kindly supported by Förderkreis der Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig e.V.