SIMON DENNY
Born in Auckland in New Zealand in 1982, and now working in Berlin, Simon Denny focuses on the ever faster production of new media and their rapid obsolescence. His work first developed around the television at the time when it was losing its monopoly because of the emergence of personalised programmes, and when computer screens were gaining ascendancy over television sets. Simon Denny uses an approach that is both conceptual and linked to contemporary pop culture. His first series, “Video Aquariums”, consists not so much of videos as of static sculptures that imitate them. He chose the image of the aquarium as the one most representative of emptiness and banality.
Produced for the exhibition, 2D Video Diagram is a mural installation comprising a plastic eye placed behind half a pair of glasses, stuck on a metal bar that pierces half an iPad. With it, Simon Denny humorously reflects on how our vision is altered by new image formats.
NINA BEIER
Born in Arthus, Denmark in 1975, and now living in Berlin, Nina Beier made a name for herself with her sculptures and installations. In her recent series “The Demonstrators”, which she continues here with new works, Nina Beier uses images taken from an image bank on the Internet. She prints them out and glues them to radiators or ladders, on chairs or trapezes. These ordinary images of ordinary objects (like broken ropes or hanging telephone receivers) are hybridised with everyday objects produced for mass consumption but whose purpose is eliminated. The disconnected radiators and unusable chairs are deprived of their original function, just as the images, which are stripped of any possible meaning.
NAVID NUUR
Navid Nuur was born in Tehran in Iran in 1976, and now lives in The Hague. When talking about his work, he speaks of “interimodules”.
These are temporary forms conceived in his workshop, based on the ideas of process and series and acting as intermediaries between himself and the surrounding space. Composed of different media, they are recreated for each exhibition, and readapted to each space in what the artist calls an “interrelation”. By this term
he means a relationship with his own body – an essential element in his creative process – with the work itself, with the viewer, and even with the public space. This is illustrated here with his flo- ral foam blocks [Thresholder]. Through the prints left by fingers, these sculptures produce hollow images: profoundly physical images linked to
the emotion of touching. Another example of this interrelation: visitors can use their mobiles to call the work Redblueredblue: they will hear
a message corresponding to the sound and
the duration of the production of this piece.
YORGOS SAPOUNTZIS
Born in Athens, Greece, in 1976, and now working in Berlin, Yorgos Sapountzis produces highly original work mingling sculpture, performance, video and – often collective – action. He seeks dialogues between the notions of sculpture and monument, while adapting an aesthetic in opposition to the traditional qualities of both.
He often uses coloured fabrics and aluminium assembly components similar to tent poles. These materials give his installations a domestic undertone, and a form of instability or fragility. The image, when added to this, may consist of a video of a performance which becomes fixed like memory in the sculpture itself – for instance, the videos in Die Arbeiter und die Badenden, 2011 document a performance the artist produced around a statue in Monbijou Park in Berlin. Sapountzis’ work expresses a tension between fragility, a sometimes ephemeral character and a more monumental intention: qualities he clearly refuses to choose between.