MARCO CECHET & SARAH STEIN | resist obvious connections between the two parts also avoid great distance
Venue: KleinerSalon | Manteuffelstraße 42, 10997 Berlin, U1 Görlitzer Bhf
From 3rd May 2014 — 29th May 2014
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During the exhibition month artists Sarah Stein & Marco Cechet invites the public to engage on a direct level with their exhibition. By hosting creative events, within the exhibition space, they give a fascinating insight of the conceptual vision and the artistic techniques used for their Utopia of a Culture dialogue.
Folding Gifts Saturday 17th May, from 5pm to 8pm
Inviting the public to participate at his happening, Marco Cechet will donate an origami goose, especially made for each person that brings a paper square – starting from 21cm of edge as minimum (the bigger the paper, the bigger the goose will be). The simple gesture of folding transforms the paper into a delicate object dense with symbolic meaning, while the act of giving as a gift allows everyone to have a personal work made by the artist.
We are all visitors here Saturday, 17th May, from 2pm to 5pm Friday, 23rd May, from 2pm to 5pm
Sarah Stein invites visitors to engage with some of the questions that drove the dialogue for Utopia of a Culture: how do you view your identity, how does it relate to the history and space of the city of Berlin, and how can it be represented? Together participants will create small sculptural effigies that can be taken as gifts, or loaned for inclusion in a collective work (later available for pick-up at the Finissage on May 29). Contributions of materials are welcome.
Drawing Utopia Saturday, 24th May, from 12 pm to 5 pm
Visitors are invited to watch and participate in a collective drawing that will be displayed at the Finissage on May 29.
Finissage
Thursday, 29th May, 7pm
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If Lévi-Strauss would say : “the diversity of human cultures is behind us, around us and ahead of us”, we could ask, does a coalition of cultures lead to a recognition of several universalities?
In this first instalment of the artistic dialogue project hosted by BcmArte, Marco Cechet and Sarah Stein address the topic Utopia of a Culture, conceived and mentored by Elisa Ganivet. Working through points of friction to create a collaborative exhibition, these artists mediated different linguistic and cultural foundations with ideas of migrancy, wilderness, and the precarious balance of forces within a system. This negotiation of two distinct personal and cultural identities finding a common ground uses Judo as a metaphorical starting point. Both dynamic and gentle, this practice is the way of yielding, knowing that resistance is more painful than accommodating the opponents’ blow, and leveraging its force to shift the balance of power. This philosophy also emphasizes maximizing efficiency and finding mutual benefit, an aspect the artists have applied to their collaborative gestures. Their dialogue is presented through works on paper as well as individual and collective sculptural elements. The title of the exhibition is derived from an instruction on how to write a Haiku by fluidly splicing together two distinct ideas.
The artisticDialogue project was created by BcmArte, a non-profit platform for artists in Berlin to create and present new works in collaboration with the Kleiner Salon project space. Over the course of eight months, eight artists will work under four distinct themes.
Please join us for the Vernissage on Saturday, 3rd of May, and check our calendar for participatory activities through the month of May, concluding with the Finissage on Thursday, 29th of May.
www.marcocechet.com // www.sarahstein.com // www.elisaganivet.com
——– The first artist couple has started their intensive collaboration project. The two artists, Sarah Stein and Marco Cechet, work together with mentor Elisa Ganivet on the topic Utopia of a Culture. If Lévi-Strauss would say : “the diversity of human cultures is behind us, around us and ahead of us”, we could ask, does a coalition of cultures lead to a recognition of several universalities? As two cultural identities they will present their negotiation of a common ground.
\\ Presenting the Artists //
Sarah Stein (born 1978) is a Canadian artist and researcher from Victoria, BC, Canada. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Victoria, a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and an MA Fine Art degree from the Utrecht Graduate School of the Arts, the Netherlands. Her artistic research deals with how processes of perception, memory and language mediate experience and shape individual ways of seeing the world – forming the basis of an understanding and knowledge that is incomplete, imperfect, and constantly in motion.
She works with a variety of media including drawing, installation, writing and video to deal with limits of perception and the translation of memory, using visual structures to point to what remains unseen at the boundary of understanding. She works regularly with collaboration as an opportunity to trace the evolution of two divergent ways of seeing the world into a singular, emergent outcome, and supports ongoing collaborations in artistic research in cooperation with the Elliptical Research Foundation.
Her work has been included in exhibitions in Canada, the USA, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. She currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Marco Cechet (1981, Bologna, Italy) is an artist who works in a variety of media.
By applying a wide variety of contemporary strategies, Cechet plays with the idea of the mortality of an artwork confronted with the power of a transitory appearance, which is, by being restricted in time, much more intense.
His artworks are made through strict rules which can be perceived as liberating constraints. Romantic values such as ‘inspiration’, ‘genius’ and ‘authenticity’ are thereby neutralised and put into perspective.
With the use of appropriated materials which are borrowed from a day-to-day context, he wants the viewer to become part of the art as a kind of added component. Art is entertainment: to be able to touch the work, as well as to interact with the work is important.
He creates situations in which everyday objects are altered or detached from their natural function, he presents them as well as references to texts, painting and architecture. Pompous writings and Utopian constructivist designs are juxtaposed with trivial objects.
By applying specific combinations and certain manipulations, different functions and/or contexts are created and categories are subtly reversed.
His works are based on inspiring situations: visions that reflect a sensation of indisputability and serene contemplation, combined with subtle details of odd or eccentric, humoristic elements.
Marco Cechet currently lives and works in Berlin.
