The artists in this exhibition play with pain; focussing on it as an integral part of life.
The pain of conformity, societal pain, rite de passages, Lustschmerz, trophies, lessons, desires, stimulation, liberation, triumph, self-expression. Self-inflicted, unwanted or as a part of rituals and societal structure, battle scars, even entertainment. No pain, no gain? JIM AVIGNON Jim Avignon is a contemporary and German Pop Artist and representatives of the art modeste, designer and musician. A respected cult figure in the art and Techno subculture in Berlin, he currently lives and works both in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and in Berlin. www.jimavignon.com NATALIE BAXTER Natalie Baxter (b. 1985, Kentucky) received her MFA from the University of Kentucky in 2012 and her BA in Fine Art from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN in 2007. Her work has been exhibited recently at Mulherin (New York), Spring/Break Art Fair (New York), Alison Milne Gallery (Toronto, ON), Institute 193 (Lexington, KY), In Ersten (Vienna, Austria), and The Cornell Art Museum (DelRay Beach, FL). Baxter’s work has been featured in Vice’s The Creator’s Project, Hyperallergic, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, W Magazine, The London Observer and The New York Times. Baxter has been an artist in residence at The Wassaic Project and a fellowship recipient at the Vermont Studio Center. She currently works in Brooklyn, NY. www.nataliebaxter.com MATHIEU BROHAN Mathieu Brohan was born in 1981 in Nantes , France and creates experimental movies. His work embodies a constant confrontation between digital and analog process. His aesthetical concerns are expressed through various manipulations, sick shots, collages, sampling or (re)deconstruction. Collecting, gathering, using the random as a linear plot, he cuts, recuts, takes it all apart to get it back together to find a meaning, unexpected relationships or provoke them by twisting time and material. He paints the portrait; a subjective reality of society. Finding a link between reality and imaginary world. For his most recent project he collects images within various media formats; found footage. Subjects like copyright, censorship, social media, mass media consumption , newsfeeds, entertainment and society of spectacle garnished with interference, bugs and distortions and an unstoppable supply of pictures. Mathieu Brohan has, among others, worked and studied at: L’ERBAN , Ecole des beaux-arts de Nantes , UDK-Berlin, Experimental Medien Gestaltung, Labor Berlin and MIRE. His last solo exhibition "More" was in Septembre 2017 at the Retramp Gallery in Berlin. vimeo.com/mathieubrohan PHILIP CRAWFORD Philip Crawford (b.1988) is a self-taught American artist living in Berlin. In his practice he explores the intersections between group narratives and perceptions of heroism, with a specific focus on nationalism, race, gender, sexuality and religion. His formal treatment of these topics varies widely, though always with a deep conceptual grounding in theories of history and cultural production. He works primarily in the mediums of painting, printmaking, and collage.Many of Philip's current projects appropriate images and text from comic books, dime magazines, novels, newspapers and auto-biographies. He uses these documents as social-historical sources and cultural artifacts, and believes that comic books in particular provide an extremely fertile ground for investigating contemporary conceptions of heroism. In using these artifacts, Philip manipulates distance, transparency, and readability to invite multiple and illusory readings, highlight simple personal revelations or prod skeptically at deep-seated “universal truths.” Philip completed a degree in History at Stanford University. www.philipac.com RIIKKA HYVÖNEN Riikka Hyvönen (1982) is a Helsinki based visual artist. Renowned for her mesmerizing roller derby bruises — sculptured and painted as mini galaxies on leathery bottoms — Hyvönen has embraced different subcultures since being a kid in Lapland. In addition to a proper storage of wood, leather and glitter, Hyvönen’s unapologetically kitsch and camp art usually demands her quite meticulous persistence with the paintbrush, as well as stable hands with the jigsaw. Having graduated with a BA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths University of London in 2015, she is currently continuing her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Her artistic investigation through the cultures of objectification, cuteness and consumption aim to help people question, and maybe even expand, their understanding of beauty. www.riikkahyvonen.com LELLO LI "Ropes have been an essential part of me, my sexuality and personal development ever since my first contact with Shibari. Exclusively as a model in the beginning but my interest to also tie grew stronger and stronger until I finally gave in and realized that I enjoy both sides equally. I've always been interested in ropes and tying as a medium for story telling and communication, for evoking real emotions and change in the people practicing it. The honesty of ropes is what intrigues me a lot and I love to push both my own and my partners boundaries. As a performer I mainly used ropes visually first. As a tool to create images primarily, not necessarily emotions. Soon I became more and more interested in trying to tie the way I do privately though. Telling a story with my performance and hoping to create something deeper, more intimate and real. A shared experience for my partner, me and the audience alike." www.instagram.com/lello_li SPENCER CHALK LEVY Spencer Chalk-Levy was born and raised in New York City and graduated in 2008 with a Bachelor in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He currently works in Vienna and New York. In his work he confronts the role of beauty and the grotesque as an aesthetic category, while using it as a vehicle for exploring subtler themes, such as mortality and conventional ideas of society. The inspiration for his playful and bizarre figures, often presented in dramatic narratives, are mainly drawn from real life observations, following the inspirational sources of artists he admires most. www.spencerchalklevy.com BLACKY RIXDORF Blacky is a psychiatrist-turned-tattoo artist from Berlin. Having dealt with people's emotional pains in his former job, his work as tattooer invariably also involves pain, albeit on a physical level, and always on a voluntary basis. The results are, compared to those of the work with psychological disorders, quite definite. Blacky is a resident artist at a tattoo collective called LIGA in Berlin. www.instagram.com/blackyrixdorf AUDREY NERVI Audrey Nervi was born in 1974 in Lyon and lives and works in Berlin. She is an artist of the Galerie Eva Hober in Paris. She had, among others, solo exhibitions at the Galerie Frank Elbaz in Paris, at the Embassy of France in Berlin, at the Stellan Holm Gallery in New York, at Le Cap – Centre d’art de Saint-Fons and Le Confort Moderne in Poitiers Audrey Nervi also participated at the Biennale in Prag in 2005, exhibited at the Lieu unique in Nantes, in Los Angeles and the Kerava Art Museum in Finland. Her art is represented within the public collections of Collection du CNAP, Musée D’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and of the Fonds Municipal d’art contemporain de la Ville de Paris. She studied at École Nationale Supérieure Des Beaux-Arts De Paris – ENSBA France and archieved the Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique (DNSEP) at the ENBA Lyon in France. www.audreynervi.com ELLEN SCHINDERMAN Ellen Schinderman is an autodidactic artist who uses stitch as a way of seeing things anew through thread. Growing up surrounded by the decorative and home arts, and it makes sense to her to combine the intent of her art, with the beauty and tradition of function and form that preceded it. As an artist and feminist, the reclaiming of needle and thread fascinates Ellen. Her work comes from a need to celebrate female pleasure and bodies. Using images that are often considered pornographic, she recontextualizes them by focusing on, and highlighting, women as beings that feel and think, rather than objects that arouse. Ellen Schinderman lives and works in Hollywood, CA. www.schindermania.com SIMON THIEL Simon Thiel is a French artist based in Berlin since 2013. He studied in the arts school of Clermont Ferrand, his hometown, between 2008-2012. His first solo show was in 2013 in France featuring portraits in acrylic and oil on large scaled canvas. Since then, he worked with several media such as illustration, graffiti and street art, comics, and painting. Thiel also participated in several group shows in France and Berlin, also with his crew, the C40K (which stands for Caravaggio / Warhammer 40 000). His early artistic influence draws from the shadow and light as seen in Caravaggio’s work and the realism of Gustave Courbet. However, recently, Thiel’s inspiration is tilted towards creating illustrations from a universe of his own, mainly featuring monsters and creatures inspired by “Metal Hurlant”, or Heavy Metal, a French magazine from the eighties. Additionally, comic artists such as Robert Crumb and Moebius remain his major source of influence. www.simon.thiel.free.fr/ Sabine Harrer Sabine Harrer is a Berlin/Copenhagen based researcher and game design artist. As member of the Copenhagen Game Collective she has collaborated on play experiences which adopt game design as artistic tool and instrument for social investigation. Performative, material, and digital elements flow together to explore ordinary experience, social power, and human vulnerability. Games allow Sabine to interweave her identities of a cultural scholar and a game designer. She regards game design as raw materials from which to craft embodied scenarios addressing a specific question: What is queer pleasure? What are the mechanics of flirtation? What does grief feel like? www.enibolas.com Doris C. Rusch Doris C. Rusch is a game designer, researcher, play aficionado and holds a position as assistant professor for game design at DePaul University in Chicago where she founded the Deep Games Lab. Before that she did post doctoral work at GAMBIT Game Lab, MIT, and Vienna University of Technology (Austria). Rusch’s work is focused on the theory and practice of game design, particularly in regard to games that model the human experience, create empathy and can be used for mental health activism. She was the lead designer and vision holder of award winning and featured projects such as “Zombie Yoga” for Kinect, “Elude”, a metaphorical game on depression, and “Akrasia”, a game that models addiction. www.cdm.depaul.edu/about/pages/people/facultyinfo.aspx?fid=1039 |