thank you Swatch Art Peace Hotel for this image.
an illustration from my pen and ink series completed during my residency at the swatch art peace hotel, mars (2015), is now included in the faces and traces exhibition in addition to the earlier mixed media work from my brain series. See both works here.
the closing date of the show has also now been extended to 1 march, for anyone wanting to visit the exhibition at the hotel’s bund location.
more about the faces and traces show here.
thank you to everyone that came to the group open studio at the swatch art peace hotel last week and made the entire evening so visually charged, unforgettable, and such a perfect way to wrap up the last few days of my time in shanghai.
i am proud to have worked alongside such an amazing group of artists, who fulfilled their separate artist residencies and realized their own work during the same time i realized mine. it has been a pleasure be able to show the results of my research and and energy during these last few winter months as part of this saph event with the work of the following talented people: alexandre and john gailla, elena monzo, dominique othenin-girard, yuan jinhua, chiara luzzana, sofia ortiz, zhu ye, sandro del pistoia, juliana ong, george van wetering, mujin, jovanna tosello, kwang-ju son, maria paz, phillip reed, linda spaman, and michael maurissens.
four of my selected drawings made during my stay.
sandro del pistoia
george van wetering aka Monokino
elena monzo
dear friends,
hopefully your 2015 is off to a great start so far!
my studio will be relocating back to berlin after a wonderful and productive time spent in shanghai as an artist-in-residence at the swatch art peace hotel.
as part of saying goodbye to shanghai, a private open studio evening is going to be hosted in my workspace this wednesday, 21 january, from 6 – 8 pm.
you are warmly invited to join. please rsvp for yourself and guests by email. it would be a pleasure to greet you in person at my studio.
[date + time: ]
wednesday, 21 january, 18:00 – 20:00
atelier 36, swatch art peace hotel, 23 east nanjing road near waitan
3楼 36号, 南京东路23号, 近中山东一路
*rsvp to kathryn.gohmert@gmail.com
share this event using the qr code below:
work by alec von bargen
taking a short break from the berlin winter and dropping back into shanghai briefly: i will be participating as one of the artists in residence at the swatch art peace hotel until 22 january, 2015.
although the time will go by too quickly, it is wonderful to be back in the mainland working alongside the other 17 artists here on the bund again after my initial residency here in 2011.
the other current fellow artists in residence include alexandre and john gailla, elena monzo, dominique othenin-girard, yuan jinhua, chiara luzzana, sofia ortiz, zhu ye, sandro del pistoia, juliana ong, george van wetering, bao lixin, jovanna tosello, son kwang-ju, maria pazcontreras buzeta, phillip reed, and heidi bryce.
it’s so refreshing to see how many positive changes have happened since i was last working in this building three years ago. looking very forward to this time of heavy creative focus while working in an old and much-loved home.
it’s nice to feel that the energy and artwork are very much alive and present in the exhibition and studio spaces of the swatch art peace hotel, even as shanghai begins to get colder.
being able to see the artwork by some of my most favorite humans as their ‘traces’ are displayed together in one place is a great feeling. the work collected from the combined three years’ worth of past artists-in-residence that have lived and created at the saph in shanghai has completely invigorated the walls with new life.
thrilled to be living and working here again over this upcoming stretch of winter weeks ahead. below are images from the exhibition including a painting from my mixed media brain series, on display and in the catalog.
UNBREAKEN
alice bucknell | aviv benn | daniel almgrenrecén | jol thomson | josé cori | kathryn gohmert | rune bosse
book launch | opening: saturday, 13 september, 7:00 pm
l’atelier-ksr | 34 grossbeerentstrasse | 10965 Berlin – Kreuzberg | u6/7 mehringdamm | u1 möckenbrücke
an experimental collaborative publication exceeds its material boundaries and finds its selves taking over spaces, relationships and even dreams. passages are channeled through a stream of collisions and implosions in and around the space of l’atelier-ksr between 13 – 19 september, 2014
facilitated by fotini lazaridou-hatzigoga, diego agulló, yves mettler, sarah lewis, john holten, judith lavagna. coordinated by paz ponce.”
[coordinates and details for further events during the week to be updated soon]
coming soon: the exhibition of AFFECT Module II artists at the gorgeous l’atelier-ksr project space in kreuzberg [13 – 19 september].
more details coming.
just in case you wanted to know a bit more about the other six artists I’m spending nearly every waking minute collaborating with during these last several weeks – you can read more about them and their brilliant work now on the AFFECT website.
[josé cori]:
josé cori was born in freiburg, germany in 1989. he studied both visual arts and aesthetic at pontificia universidad católica de chile, in chile [2008-2013]. he focuses mainly on installation and painting, and now lives and works in berlin.
[rune bosse:]
[bio-poem] if i was a plant, in the summer of 1987. sprouting between the forest and the beach, on southern zealand in denmark. then i would grow, become interested in growing. later in life through being moved and moving, collect nourishment from different soils and places, play with, and on, the different grounds. i would learn and seek inspiration in my natural surroundings. it would be a trigger in my work. both thru questioning the world, how is it put together? and the possibilities of assembling it in new ways. I often would find myself confused and not sure of where i was going, then locating the starting point or origin, would make it possible to create a line and see a connection, it would give me direction knowing the nature of things. maybe from two thousand and nine till eleven putting my roots in the royal danish academy of fine arts and afterwards taking part two and a half year in the institute for spatial experiments lead by olafur eliasson in berlin. still playing with things that grow.
[kathryn gohmert:]
kathryn Gohmert [1983] is from the united states. she received her ba in art from the university of texas at austin before relocating to the uk, then china. in the last six years, while based mainly in shanghai, she has been working throughout china in a succession of studio spaces that include the songzhuang artist village in beijing and 696 weihai lu in shanghai. her range of mediums now include illustration, video, mixed media, installation and performance art. She is currently based in berlin.
[jol thomson:]
despite years of university educations, along with all the accrued debts, he still cannot specifically name more than five types of trees [of which he assumes there must be many many others]. and while preferring not to align himself with a specific nation, he anyways profusely enjoys maple syrup and “the great outdoors,” though not enough to know the systematic classifications or taxa of the types of things that might be “out there.” while waisting his time reading and thinking about things he could never fully comprehend, he becomes occasionally bored and resorts to making sounds into volumes, rhythms and patterns – or he goes swimming – or he just stares off into deep space. . . recently, upon trying to decide whether his capacity to remember was getting better or not, he realized he simply couldn’t recall how it was in the past anyways, quickly forgot the whole endeavour, and got to the task of rearranging a collection of favourite stones kept on and around his working table.
aviv benn:
aviv benn [b.1988,] is a tel-aviv based artist. through direct, expressive paintings and while using a scope of visual language ranging from street to folk art, aviv explores in her work imagery from classical painting and folk art – referencing often the symbols of skulls, masks and self portraits – alongside the investigation of “inner worlds,” as can be seen most recently in her latest series, dealing with the concept of death anxiety. benn’s thick oil paintings often combine “direct” materials primarily used in street art – xerox transfers, black and white prints and [of course] spray paint. aviv holds a bfa from the bezalel academy of arts and design in jerusalem, where she graduated with honors in 2013. she is mainly based in tel-aviv and jerusalem.
[alice bucknell:]
alice bucknell is a visual artist, writer, researcher and thinker based in chicago, il. her practice is located at the intersection of art, aesthetics, and social spaces. her anthropological research takes up the social authority of public/installation art and the production of art spaces [i.e. artist collectives] in the urban environment as a platform for both knowledge production and sharing. as a visual artist she considers topics of memory and commemoration; the phenomena of nostalgia, embodiment, and affect; in addition to the aesthetics of atmosphere and [be]longing. She considers her art practice to be an additional form of fieldwork. she is currently investigating the role of contemporary art in constructing new narratives of social experience within both the built and imaginary environments of detroit and berlin, paying particular attention to the ways in which visual and performance artists can [re]activate the space and politics of emptiness in the modern cityscape. this experiential-experimental project, taking the form of both a publication [upcoming, 2015] and a website, also explores the ways in which abandonment and urban voids have in turn become aestheticized; the relationship between history, fantasy, memory; and the productive and hazardous possibilities that shape these changing social, spatial, and visual dialogues.
[daniel almgrenrecén:]
daniel is working as choreographer, performer, movement coach, workshop facilitator and project manager. he is systematically problematising choreography as creative practice by looking in to the fields of education, management, architecture and design thinking. daniel holds a ba in choreography from sndo at the amsterdam school of the arts and has also studied theology and drama. since 2011 he is through his work exploring the notions of home that have so far resulted in the experiential works native realm in 2012 and near that place in 2013.
our first publication, trial-by-fire-style.
all the joys and frustrations of the book-making process performed in a single day.
this “book sprint” project was facilitated by john holten, co-founder of berlin-based publishers, broken dimanche press. see more of john’s work here.
the birth of a book in images:
This entry was posted in related, workand tagged on August 11, 2014.--
the idea behind the skill exchange workshop, led this weekend by the individual artists collectively making up AFFECT’s current artists-in-residence group, was that each artist had a very specific technique / methodology which had been purposefully developed in their life, becoming fine-honed to the point of near superpower level.
with the ultimate design of passing on unusual skills to strangers and thereby empowering them, each artist devised the details of the specific workshop they felt most masterful and capable in leading.
topics included how to successfully avoid conversation on airplanes, traveling backwards at top speed, composing haikus, nordic rope-tying techniques [survival], how to successfully avoid paying rent, the art of climbing trees like a ninja assassin, and the ancient dutch technique of expertly cloning plants.
my tree-climbing workshop.
my tree-climbing workshop.
my tree-climbing workshop.
plant-cloning workshop by rune bosse.
haiku-writing workshop by jose cori.
how to avoid conversations on airplanes by alice bucknall.
it’s today! hope to see you, 6 – 9 pm, at agora for the AFFECT module ii SKILL EXCHANGE workshop. join us this gorgeous saturday afternoon to learn how to rescue people from drowning, climb trees, avoid paying rent, clone your plants and more…
see our listing on artberlin.de here for more information.
this is a great interview with the the talented moderator of our current AFFECT module ii project, fotini lazaridou, [who has also worked with projects in china off and on for the last few years].
and we’re off to a great start so far … being courted with a delicious meal at agora collective’s cozy downstairs cafe is a dangerous thing to get used to, but its a wonderful way to get to know the creative minds that will be working closely together for the next ten weeks.
after touring the building and spending a relaxed evening talking with the organizers, artists, writers and facilitators in agora’s gorgeous garden, it’s clear that the people here have all come together to develop something striking and original in this space during these next few months. looking forward to getting started.
thank you, inluxe for including me and my practice in this article about my “chinese attitude” (我的中国态度).
read the full article on the inluxe website here.
so proud to be in this article with the other talented artists now in residence at the swatch art peace hotel.
thanks to the team at du for portraying the artists and their work so favorably.
