Bethanian Open Studios 2018

About

Andrea Brandão
UNCERTAIN IMAGE
An uncertain image is by definition unreliable. An image can be true or fake and we as a contemporary society, saturated by deceiving images, need to be critical about them in order to overcome a shallow, one-dimensional experience. UNCERTAIN IMAGE questions and explores the effects of such true and false (self-)images. Further, visitors are invited to actively participate in the exhibition to consciously explore and experience the polarities and grey areas of images.
The Sculpture Performance 'Shifter' with Sonia Noya will run during the opening.

David Escalona
COLD FEVER
In his site-specific project COLD FEVER, David Escalona weaves a network of metaphors, poetic and subtle. He presents new approaches to the discourse around illness, weakness and vulnerability as an alternative to the norm of this wrong-headed world and its tendency towards self-optimizing.

Josée Pedneault
Glazial-Kosmogonie
Glazial-Kosmogonie is a multi-element installation that departs from the early 20th c. pseudo-science World Ice Theory (Welteislehre), invented by Austrian engineer Hanns Hörbiger. Though roundly denounced by the scientific community, World Ice Theory was enthusiastically embraced by the general public and endorsed by the Nazis. Through a combination of photographs with extracts from historical materials, the exhibition seeks to shed light upon and question constructs of knowledge and truth.

Zahra Rashid
Zahra Rashid works with drawing, printing techniques and installation, concerning herself above all with the reproduction and multiple representation of objects in various media. For this exhibition she is focusing on paper, ‘deconstructing’ it through, for example, papiermaché or casting sheets of paper using plaster of Paris. Through her “copies” – which are nevertheless unique works – Rashid not only reveals forms of representation to the viewer but also visualizes the temporal course of her production, thus making time itself into the object of our perception.

Muhannad Shono
ala: ritual machine
In his interdisciplinary practice Muhannad Shono concerns himself with the mechanization of ritual forms of life and practices in the wake of digitalization, so investigating the significance of the ritual and its emotional determination. For this exhibition, Shono will be showing the first phase of his ongoing research project ‘ala: ritual machine’ in the form of motor-driven objects. In this context, his artistic debate is directed at the ceremonial aspect of the ritualized object – as a new form of the ritual.
The research project is taking place in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Manfred Hild from the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory of Beuth Technical College (Hochschule für Technik) in Berlin.

Anne Zahalka
The Wanderer upon a Castle Came ….
Australian artist Zahalka lived on her own for the first time during a working stay at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in 1986/87. She found enjoyment in the sense of 'being foreign' and the resultant anonymity, which enabled her to achieve an unexpectedly comfortable distance, from which she could become an observer. The series ‘The Wanderer upon a Castle Came ….' is Zahalka’s attempt, using photography, to describe the strangeness of Berlin in 1986/87 and the feelings that being here triggered for her initially.

The exhibitions by Josée Pedneault and Anne Zahalka are presented in the context of EMOP Berlin 2018 - www.emop-berlin.eu