Marie-Luise Marchand & Peggy Pehl Curated by Agnieszka Roguski
“Like a mirrored surface, they learned to be obligated to themselves by feeling an obligation to each other. Torrance Shipman Gallery is excited.” Products, bodies and materials seem to demonstrate their usefulness. Inwardness is declared as essence, stylizing the exterior. Neither the body nor the subject can be understood as self-sufficient units anymore; they are in constant resonance with different technologies and systems that protect, network and optimize themselves. “Empathy might be close to telepathy.” Vitality thus becomes an act of reaction and a moment of constant reverberation – it manifests itself as a performative linkage of reactions, as Acts of Responsiveness.
Responsiveness here means more than mere reactivity. It provides materials with vibrancy by giving them the ability to resonate. “Camouflage, Camoflauge (sic). The two comforters were on sale at Ikea.” Artificiality, absurdity, applicable tools and technologies form strategies for the complex penetration of everyday life. They deploy the liquefying boundaries of an activated, stimulated and mobilized subject; and its various forms of appearance.
So how can photographic surfaces and sculptural objects create space for resonance? And how do their strategies of animation react to each other – the distant documented bodies on the one hand, and the abstract sculpture on the other? “The artists in this show include my old friends, new friends and near strangers.” Marie-Luise Marchand’s photographs and Peggy Pehl’s sculptures form an overall installation consisting of complementary attempts for subjectivization. “Curators like to draw lines too. Together their energy and clarity of vision make me feel like I am part of something, whatever that means.”
Marie-Luise Marchand studied at the Acadamy of Fine Arts (Prof. Peter Piller) in Leipzig. She has exhibited with recent shows at Fotomuseum Winterthur, International Contemporary Art Fair, Thessaloniki, and The Grass Is Greener Gallery, Leipzig and with magazine releases at Das Gift (EDIZIONE MULTICOLORE), Berlin, and Rowclub (Bauer Verlag), Frankfurt am Main. She lives and works in Berlin.
Peggy Pehl recently had exhibitions at Halle 14, Leipzig, Saloon under a bridge, Berlin, Gallery Vincenz Sala, Paris and Platia Victoria, Athens. Born in East Germany and trained at the Acadamy of Fine Arts in Leipzig, she currently she lives and works in Berlin.
Agnieszka Roguski is a writer and curator who lives and works in Berlin. Under the collective A.R. practice, she works with graphic designer Ann Richter on curatorial projects. Her works were recently shown at KV—Kunstverein Leipzig, HKW Berlin and published by Tectum, Peter Lang, Broken Dimanche, Revolver, Spike Art Magazine, KubaParis and vonhundert.
Torrance Shipman
Marie-Luise Marchand & Peggy Pehl
Curated by: Agnieszka Roguski
Acts of Responsiveness
219 36th Street, 4th Floor
Brooklyn, New York 11232
