Rafael Domenech: Notations From Somewhere

About

For this exhibition the Cuban-born, NY-based artist has created two parallel projects around Potsdamer Straße that highlight Domenech’s distinctive approach to exhibition-making.

Rafael Domenech is at the forefront of a new generation of artists that is redefining the exhibition experience. Domenech’s conceptual practice ranges from small artist’s books to large-scale architectural constructions that often work in tandem with one another. In “Notations from Somewhere,” the exhibition takes the form of an experimental publication that constructs and deconstructs the complex book-architecture-city interrelations. For Domenech, exhibition-making is much like publishing: the editorial decisions aim to develop a sequence of moments that create a context for an aesthetic experience. The works in the exhibition integrate the convulsive dynamism of the city and thus heighten our awareness of architecture and the urban landscape outside of the gallery space.

The first work one encounters in the exhibition has stacked Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message on top of a rock and wedged it into the wall. With this architectural intervention Domenech points to the tension between poetry, discourse, artwork, and architectural structure that is at the heart of the spectator’s experience. Meanwhile, the yellow semi-translucent screens that run through the gallery act as room dividers inspired by Chinese folding screens, but they also transform the three main rooms of the gallery into one large labyrinth-like architectural publication. The text that runs across the top and the bottom of the screens contains a poem by the Mexican poet Octavio Paz titled, “Lo Idéntico”, or “the identical/same” in English. The screens, which are built out of repurposed “bad infinity” materials such as plywood and construction mesh, are modular and can be separated to become stand-alone concrete poems. Paz is a major source of inspiration for the artist and also features in another work by Domenech. In “plastic sunshine-opaque transparencies”  an orange electrical cable runs across the second and third floor of the gallery cutting through the floor/ceiling. 

This approach extends to other works on view, including “The Elliptical Hour,” a group of works that are scattered across the three rooms and have two configurations: open and closed. The visitors can ask the gallery's assistant to open and position the books on the wall. When they hang vertically, the “The Elliptical Hour” works resemble posters or paintings that are constructed out of image-tiled laser-print paper overlaid with commercial vinyl. Arranging and rearranging works throughout the exhibition produces an oscillatory motion that invites for a promiscuous viewing experience much like that of cities. This unique approach asks the viewer to consider Domenech’s individual works as part of an artist’s book, where as he says, “objects are words in a poem, the building is the page.” At the same time, the gallery is not simply a container for displaying discreet art objects, instead, the book-architecture complex presents change as a permanent state of our fragmentary post-industrial life, an experience full of affirmation, negation, ambivalence and contradiction.

Parallel projects

The exhibition spirals out of the gallery space into various city-wide projects inspired by a work of literature that provides a unique perspective on Berlin, Every Man Dies Alone (1947) by Hans Fallada. The novel is based on a true story of a working-class couple that left letters of resistance against the Nazis across occupied Berlin after the death of their son during World War II. Everyday they dropped postcards that said, “Mother! The Führer has murdered my son. Mother! The Führer will murder your sons too” in mailboxes, on benches, or just drop them on the ground. These silent billboards of dissent pointed in a wealth of directions all at once: civil disobedience, concrete poetry, architecture, proximity and dislocation. All the parallel projects relate back to the exhibition through our own traveling and the repeated experience of the message-poems that underscore the relationship between here, nowhere, everywhere, and somewhere in Domenech’s practice. These bridging realities and interconnecting spaces always point to how much remains unknown.

Hua International is pleased to announce “Notations from Somewhere,” Rafael Domenech’s first solo show in Berlin. For this exhibition the Cuban-born, NY-based artist has created two parallel projects around Potsdamer Straße that highlight Domenech’s distinctive approach to exhibition-making.

Rafael Domenech is at the forefront of a new generation of artists that is redefining the exhibition experience. Domenech’s conceptual practice ranges from small artist’s books to large-scale architectural constructions that often work in tandem with one another. In “Notations from Somewhere,” the exhibition takes the form of an experimental publication that constructs and deconstructs the complex book-architecture-city interrelations. For Domenech, exhibition-making is much like publishing: the editorial decisions aim to develop a sequence of moments that create a context for an aesthetic experience. The works in the exhibition integrate the convulsive dynamism of the city and thus heighten our awareness of architecture and the urban landscape outside of the gallery space.

The first work one encounters in the exhibition has stacked Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message on top of a rock and wedged it into the wall. With this architectural intervention Domenech points to the tension between poetry, discourse, artwork, and architectural structure that is at the heart of the spectator’s experience. Meanwhile, the yellow semi-translucent screens that run through the gallery act as room dividers inspired by Chinese folding screens, but they also transform the three main rooms of the gallery into one large labyrinth-like architectural publication. The text that runs across the top and the bottom of the screens contains a poem by the Mexican poet Octavio Paz titled, “Lo Idéntico”, or “the identical/same” in English. The screens, which are built out of repurposed “bad infinity” materials such as plywood and construction mesh, are modular and can be separated to become stand-alone concrete poems. Paz is a major source of inspiration for the artist and also features in another work by Domenech. In “plastic sunshine-opaque transparencies”  an orange electrical cable runs across the second and third floor of the gallery cutting through the floor/ceiling. 

This approach extends to other works on view, including “The Elliptical Hour,” a group of works that are scattered across the three rooms and have two configurations: open and closed. The visitors can ask the gallery's assistant to open and position the books on the wall. When they hang vertically, the “The Elliptical Hour” works resemble posters or paintings that are constructed out of image-tiled laser-print paper overlaid with commercial vinyl. Arranging and rearranging works throughout the exhibition produces an oscillatory motion that invites for a promiscuous viewing experience much like that of cities. This unique approach asks the viewer to consider Domenech’s individual works as part of an artist’s book, where as he says, “objects are words in a poem, the building is the page.” At the same time, the gallery is not simply a container for displaying discreet art objects, instead, the book-architecture complex presents change as a permanent state of our fragmentary post-industrial life, an experience full of affirmation, negation, ambivalence and contradiction.

Parallel projects

The exhibition spirals out of the gallery space into various city-wide projects inspired by a work of literature that provides a unique perspective on Berlin, Every Man Dies Alone (1947) by Hans Fallada. The novel is based on a true story of a working-class couple that left letters of resistance against the Nazis across occupied Berlin after the death of their son during World War II. Everyday they dropped postcards that said, “Mother! The Führer has murdered my son. Mother! The Führer will murder your sons too” in mailboxes, on benches, or just drop them on the ground. These silent billboards of dissent pointed in a wealth of directions all at once: civil disobedience, concrete poetry, architecture, proximity and dislocation. All the parallel projects relate back to the exhibition through our own traveling and the repeated experience of the message-poems that underscore the relationship between here, nowhere, everywhere, and somewhere in Domenech’s practice. These bridging realities and interconnecting spaces always point to how much remains unknown.

parallel project 1

Here, We Burnt the River

Concrete poem on ceiling tiles

Location: P71 Spätkauf on Potsdamerstraße 71

parallel project 2

Hopscotch Reading Room

Artist intervention in New York Review of Books

Location: Kurfürstenstraße 14/Haus B

parallel project 3

The oblique recipient (a conversation to nowhere) (2021)

Early this year Domenech sent a series of posters inspired by the novel Every Man Dies Alone to be dispersed around Berlin. For months the gallery team documented the drops and sent them back to the artist who has compiled the images into an artist book.