dienstag-bis-sonntag

Anne Speier Dienstag bis Sonntag 16 October 2021 - 18 November 2021 Six of the seven pictures in this exhibition were painted on a particular day of the week, namely the one whose name they bear as their title. I wanted to try out whether a vague feeling for colors, which the days have in my imagination, would be transferred this way onto the canvas. At first, it was confusing to jump back and forth between the paintings at such a fast pace, but it was confusing in a dynamic and productive way. After a few months, changing between the works became too fast for me, and the rhythm dissolved. I always continued to paint where I knew to go on. However, the paintings were so advanced that the days of the week had taken over. The days occupied the paintings. As a consequence, I often lost the sense of when in the week I actually was. After a while, some mossy patches started to form and spread over the surfaces. The picture Finale is only moss—an open door, a way out of the exhibition. – Anne Speier Anne Speier (*1977, Frankfurt am Main) lives and works in Vienna. She has exhibited (selection) at Secession, Vienna; MUMOK (Museum of Modern Art), Vienna; Meyer Kainer, Vienna; Silberkuppe, Berlin; Galerie der Stadt Schwaz, Tirol; Portikus, Frankfurt; What Pipline, Detroit, Belvedere 21er Haus Vienna; Greene Naftali, New York and Gregor Staiger, Zürich. Vera Young how a tree dies 16 October 2021 - 18 November 2021 In the music video of his seminal song A Piece of Red Cloth, Chinese rock musician Cui Jian is blindfolded: “You used a piece of red cloth,” he sings, “to blindfold my eyes and cover up the sky. You asked me what I could see. I said I saw happiness.” In her new installation, Vera Young uses red silk and other fabrics for an installation in the [erp] window space and to wrap a dead tree on Ernst-Reuter-Platz. This way, different parts become one, a unified system. Since the beginning of her artistic practice, the artist has used sewing to make works with canvas and paper, as well as immersive installations. Many of her paintings, dots, and sculptures, still now, resemble stitches. There’s a paradox here: sewing damages the material, creates holes, and at the same time, it repairs, fixes. The stitching is both a repetitive gesture and form. In continuation of historical abstraction, these compositions negotiate coexisting cells, broad fields of color, figures and ground. For Vera Young, stitching is a metaphor for demystification: processing personal loss, unmasking family histories and raising questions about larger, intangible political systems. How does a tree die? Situated between a Deutsche Bank, a police station and a public arts university, Vera Young’s gesture to cover up an unnoticed, dead tree stands as a provocative act of love. Vera Young (*1986 in Suzhou, China) lives and works in Berlin. She has exhibited at (selection) Galerie OVO, Taipei, Taiwan; Galerie Pugliese Levi, Migrant Birds Space, Berlin, Germany and Tabula Rasa Gallery, Beijing, China.