Sven-Åke Johansson / Thomas Kapielski

About

SVEN-ÅKE JOHANSSON / THOMAS KAPIELSKI

22.02. - 21.03.2020

Invitation to the opening on Friday, 21st of February, 2020 at 7 pm

including
LP release: SÅJ / TK - Das Moabiter Duo/recovered (Fantôme Verlag)

and video launch: SÅJ / TK - Live at Korrekt

LAURA MARS GALLERY
Bülowstraße 52 / 10783 Berlin
lauramars.de / facebook + instagram: lauramarsgallery
Gallery hours: Wed. - Fri. 1 – 7 p.m.; Sat. 1 – 6 p.m
 

Press release

Laura Mars Gallery is delighted to present the first joint exhibition by Sven-Åke Johansson and Thomas Kapielski from
22nd of February to 21st of March 2020.

To accompany the exhibition, the LP "Das Moabiter Duo - recovered" will be published by Fantôme Verlag. The LP, mixed and mastered by Frieder Butzmann, features a previously unreleased concert recording from 1983. Joint performances by Kapielski and Johansson took place in clubs like Korrekt (Alt-Moabit, Berlin) or ‒ as part of the experimental concert series "Materialausgabe" initiated by Heiner Goebbels and Christoph Anders ‒ at Batschkapp in Frankfurt/Main. Kapielski's electronic manipulations of sounds from everyday objects resulted in, as he himself puts it as ironically as conceitedly, an "ingenious-stockhausianistical" performance. Meanwhile, Johansson explored the sonic possibilities of shoe trees, lashed out with towels, grabbed his accordion with its attached rear-view mirror, and, last but not least, played, of course, his astonishing drum kit.

Thomas Kapielski, a visual artist, academically trained geographer and philologist, a lecturer, musician and writer, known for his ironic observations of everyday life and for being critical of the art world, often in a self-mocking way, has long since ceased to be an insider's tip. However, his offbeat, grotesque and subversive comments or the shrewd thinking behind his found objects and photographs continue to cause a stir.

Sven-Åke Johansson, who is equally renowned as a composer and musician, poet and visual artist, has been one of the protagonists of the music and art scene in West Berlin since the early 1970s. Johansson repeatedly used telephone books when he improvised on stage, banging them against each other, drumming on them, removing pages to change the sound. Furthermore, during the performance of one of his concert pieces, telephone books were thrown on the floor like bricks according to the instructions. In his various series of charcoal and pencil drawings, the artist also examines his subjects in all their materiality and constantly derives further aspects from them. Thus, for the first time, drawings of advertisements for small businesses from old "Yellow Pages" are shown in the exhibition. The quirky nature of the slogans and logos of the original advertisements is amplified by Johansson's spontaneous recreations of the typefaces.

The scope of Johansson's and Kapielski's thinking and doing transcends genre boundaries. They both have a special relationship to the respective social or professional environment in which they operate. They are a part of it, but at the same time do not quite fit in, which for both of them leads to specific points of view that provide analytical insights.

The opening of the exhibition coincides with an LP release and a video launch. The video documents a concert of Das Moabiter Duo at Korrekt from the early 1980s.