Join us to celebrate the life and death of Exgirlfriend at Lankwitzerstrasse.

 For one last night, we will present a multimedia event, including an exhibition curated by Horse & Pony, a schedule of performances, DJ’s, open studios from the BBK and HER buildings, and more. 

Follow us on Instagram for more information about the exhibition, performances, and artists.

Schedule

EXGIRLFRIEND 

17:00 - 22:00 — Group Exhibition

curated by Horse & Pony 

BACK GALLERY

18:00 —  Caroline Beach 

“All Haircuts Are Sacred”, 2024

19:00 —  Krišjānis Elviks 

“loop of a loop of a loop - - loop of a loop of a loop“, 2024

19:45 — Elena Francalanci 

"AL DI LÁ", 2024

20:15 — Emma Szumlas, Kuba Stepien 

“Babe”, 2024. 

DJ ROOM

17:00 - 19:00 — Jun Suzuki

TBA, 2024

DJs

19:00-20:00 — Bapi @bapi_disco

20:00 — Paradiso @deejayparadiso
21:00 — DJ Bricks @dee.jay.bricks

22:00 — Such Luxury @suchluxury

23:00 — Jonny Tiernan @jonnytiernan

OPEN STUDIOS

BBK & HER Building

17:00 - 22:00

WERY WOR!
Hosted by Exgirlfriend
21 May – 11 June 2023
Lankwitzerstraße 14, 12107 Berlin

Vernissage
Saturday, 20 May 2023
5-10PM

Open
Sunday, 21 May 3-6pm
Saturday, 27 May 3-6pm
Saturday, 3 June 3-6pm
Saturday, 10 June 3-6pm
+ by appointment

www.exgirlfriendberlin.com
www.HERcontemporary.com

HER & Exgirlfriend are pleased to present "WERY WOR!", a group exhibition by a selection of artists working in the HER + BBK studio community in Berlin-Mariendorf:

Daniel Greenfeld
Margaux Compte-Mergier
Magdalena Paz
Stefanie Loveday
Saskia Reis
Tonia Aurfali Lindner
Liz Miller Kovacs
Sara Herrlander
Ana Cantoni
Pavlos Ioannides
Paulina Radic

"WERY WOR!" directly and indirectly addresses the current social, political, and global environmental situation from a diverse set of vantage points. Established in 2019, the HER & BBK artist community at Lankwitzerstraße in Mariendorf has been a microcosm of the Berlin art scene, housing the studios of artists from a multitude of geographic and socio-political backgrounds, now co-existing on the outskirts of Berlin. While each artistic practice represented in "WERY WOR!" is unique – the individual practices coalesce into a cohesive, multi-dimensional representation of pressing contemporary topics. Each artist approaches a given issue utilizing various modes of research, production, and presentation. Approaches range from abstraction to corporeality, inspired by a variety of artistic references. The exhibition includes painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and video.

www.danielgreenfeld.com @daniel_greenfeld
www.margauxcompte-mergier.fr @margaux.compte.mergier
www.magdalenapaz.com @magdalena.p.a.z
www.stefanieloveday.com @stefanieloveday
www.saskiareis.com @saskiareiscom
www.miller-kovacs.art @miller.kovacs
www.anacantoni.com @anabelencantoni
www.pavlosioannides.com @pavlos_ioannides_
www.saraherrlander.com @bigbusinessmonkey
www.paulinaradic.com @pauliradic
www.aurfalindner.de @tonia_aurfali_lindner

HEAVVEN
Solo exhibition
Mit Borrás
September 15th- October 8th, 2021
-
Opening reception September 15th
7 pm - 10 pm

Afterparty
10 pm - 12 am
DJ performance by Bertolt Meyer
https://www.instagram.com/bertolt01/

Exgirlfriend is pleased to announce the upcoming solo-exhibition by visual artist Mit Borrás.

Borrás’ new visual works will be presented, along with a performance entitled RAAIN, specially designed for the occasion.

RAAIN is a multi-dimensional spatial installation, featuring video, a live performer, sound, and other key elements of Borrás’ visual world and will mark the show’s inauguration as a unique happening, forecasting the exhibition's conceptual realms.

Although connection is primarily identified with connectivity in modern western society, through an increasing amount of digitalization in almost every aspect of our lives, the concept of connection can of course be met in many diverse dimensions and contexts beyond the solely technology-based realm.

Borrás’ new work complex encompasses the ADAPTASI CYCLE, which is a divination of our reality, transcending the limits of pasts and futures, the organic and synthetic, the natural and technological. His work seeks to explore the metaphysical depths of adaptation as a method of surpassing the categorial limits of existence. The various elements of the exhibition operate as an essayistic portrait that embodies an augmented state of awareness of these aspects, and an elevated sense of connectivity.

Borrás’ previous works raise questions of how technology, and specifically lifestyle products can serve as performance-enhancers geared towards accelerating cerebral evolution. At the same time, technology can also become a diversion – it can provide the prospect of escape from the dismal reality of the inescapable decomposition inherent in nature. His new center of focus is based on the interconnectivity between nature and technology and the philosophical concept of adaptation. Borrás’ recent works address questions of transience and empathy within a technology-driven culture, adapting the principle that technology is both the translator and final application of science or, more generally, of knowledge. This conviction also becomes an impulse to explore various scenarios of future life because of its alignment with its meta-/physical disposition within the artist’s current approach.

Borrás creates a universe that invokes the ancient and the futuristic simultaneously. This universe is inhabited by the video work’s protagonist. With no one but a robotic dog for company, M (Ray La’Vord) lives in isolation in a soft cave, where he performs methodical and ceremonial acts. Seemingly completely at peace within its being and time, M creates captivating sense of suspense through his graceful, yet precise ritualistic exercises, as well as through his non-hierarchical approach to his world.Treating his body, surrounding objects, and space with both connected and caring respectfulness, Borrás subtly visualizes a bigger metaphysical context in this amor vacui.

The ‘soft-cave’ seems sterile, but is a depiction of the womb as a safe space of infinite harmony – a space not only protected from exterior chaos, but that even doubts the existence of any kind of chaos at all. The space, like its inhabitant, conveys a sense of other-worldly, idiosyncratic beauty, foreseen in the lifestyle tendencies of Zeitgeist, but that exists without any of the capitalistic drama and stylistic ‘tricks’ or ‘gimmicks’ of our all- and self-promoting, illusionary world.

The distinct and consequent aesthetic determination of Borrás’ work might seem intimidatingly cathartic at times, but in actuality, it stems from a vision and pure desire for serenity, clarity, and innocence within his post-human/transitory realm.

Mit Borrás is a visual artist based in both Madrid and Berlin. His multi-dimensional artistic approach primarily incorporates video- and sculpture-based works that conceptually explore how modern society has elevated digitalism, technology, and progress into its paradigm of evolution.

Text by Julia Schmelzer

HEAVVEN will incorporate a video installation which is part of Borrás’ new body of work - the ADAPTASI CYCLE, that has been developed over the course of the last five years.

Exgirlfriend

Lankwitzerstrasse 14 12107

Berlin, DE

www.mitborras.com

www.Exgirlfriendberlin.com

- More info coming soon –

http://exgirlfriendberlin.com/pressreleases

Mit Borrás. ADAPTASI CYCLE. 4K. 2021 | FILM BY Mit Borrás | ART DIRECTOR Rachel Lamot | MUSIC Daniel Vacas Peralta | PERFORMERS Elan D’orphium, Weixin Quek Chong, Ray La’Vord, Marta Casado, Ana Calcedo, Rachel Lamot, Double Robot, A1 Robot, Oliver Robot, Juan Pérez, Mireia Ballesteros, Issoris Pérez, Manuel Escorihuela, Warriors Cheerleaders | PHOTOGRAPHY Mit Borrás | ROBOTICS Casual Robots | DRONE Yueqiang Liu Zhang Mercado RC | SPECIAL FASHION DESIGN Path by Janine Grosche | Kim Rosario | MAKE UP FX Harpo | Eloy Noguera | Ana Cuéllar | PROSTHETICS Mobilis | Ottobock | 3D PROSTHETICS Ayudame 3D | BIRDS Emociones al vuelo | SPECIAL ARCHITECTURES | Zaha Hadid | Kathryn Findlay | Puerta de América | Sabrina Amrani Gallery | Cavve Pavilion | UMBRALES Dagoberto Rodríguez | CLINIC DEPARTMENT Relevium | Gomez Bravo | ACROBATICS | MPDS | ROBOTICS DESIGN Unitree | Canbot | PRODUCTION DESIGN Cavve Pavilion.

Generously supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn 20/21 NEUSTART KULTUR

« We know almost nothing about the living body. We must therefore love it where it expresses itself: in its trembling fragility. » - Paul B. Preciado  

EXGIRLFRIEND gallery is pleased to present 'Slender Axes' featuring works by by Fiona Valentine Thomann with works by Melika Shafahi, Constance Tenvik around the notion of biopolitics. Please join us for the opening reception September 5th, 2020 at 7pm for drinks and conversation with the artists.

'Slender Axes'
Fiona Valentine Thomann, Constance Tenvik, & Melika Shafahi
Saturday, September 5th, 2020
7pm - 10pm
Exgirlfriend
Lankwitzerstrasse 14, 12107
Alt-Mariendorf, Berlin

Berlin Art Week & Gallery Weekend hours: Sunday, September 13th 5-10pm

By appointment only

Exgirlfriend presents Slender Axes, an exhibition by Fiona Valentine Thomann with select works by Constance Tenvik and Melika Shafahi.

The installation on which this exhibition is centered (“lapse social for physical distancing”, 2020) is a commentary on our collective predicament in the times of a global pandemic which draws lines to much larger political issues, such as government manipulation, invisible borders, the inefficacy of control attempts by world powers, and the idea of “social” vs “physical“ distancing. Referencing Foucault’s idea of “biopolitics”, the artist creates a tensioned space which has been systematically covered with one cent euro coins, each placed 1,5 m apart. A currency on the verge of obsolescence, it seems that its most notable purpose now would be to harnesses the threat of contagion, passed from hand to hand within communities and therefore a fertile ground for the current fear, COVID. Valentine’s other works in the exhibition elaborate on such concepts as well as demand freedom from those who would oppress in a time of uncertainty. In “Tulip” by Melika Shafahi, the artist asks us to rethink the visual culture of contemporary Iran through its materiality, based on economic and social realities. “If the tulip symbolises martyrdom and suffering in Iran and  "is born from the blood of the martyrs", according to the consecrated saying, it is another flower, the gladiolus, which played the role of ersatz of the Tulip in the years of war (Iran-Iraq) and conflict, placed on the coffins of the martyrs and in official ceremonies. The abundance of gladioli in the Iranian market created a rupture between visual and material culture: the gladioli placed on the martyr's coffin clearly evokes tulips representing the martyr.” Constance Tenvik contributes a small gouache work on paper whose title speaks for itself, “Remembering Marching in the Streets (Fiona, Paris, March 8th)”, a reference to International Women’s Day, March 8th, which sparked worldwide protests fighting discrimination and oppression against women. 

-Elena Feijoo, Founder and Director, Exgirlfriend Berlin.

**COVID GUIDELINES**
RSVP required via this event. Patrons must wear a mask at all times while inside the exhibition space, bathrooms, or building. Masks can be removed in our courtyard area.
Please be sure to wash your hands thoroughly often. Hand sanitizer will be provided and safety measures taken.

7 - 26 September 2019

Opening Reception

When: 06 September 2019, 7 pm - 10 pm

Where: Exgirlfriend Gallery Lankwitzer Str. 14, 12107 Berlin

Artists: Aaike Stuart (Netherlands), Esteban Rivera (Colombia)

Die Versteinerten is a duo presentation of the Berlin based artists Esteban Rivera and Aaike Stuart. 

This exhibition proposes stones and digital media as a way to conserve reality in completely different pace and understanding of time. Central in both artist’s work are human efforts to get a grip on what is alive and therefore perishable. Be it technological mediations or ideological constructions, each work focuses on ways to preserve ideas, time, and life and uses geological/planetary temporalities as input to produce images.

Architecture, monuments, libraries and digital storage devices are all in charge of preserving ideologies and ideas of past times into the future. Stuart and Rivera revisit the way ideology presents itself and deal with the generation of images as a visible manifestation of cultural values and ideologies.

Exgirlfriend was founded by the multi-national curator Elena Feijoo in 2016 as an exhibition space for contemporary art bounded by no rules but oriented towards conceptual work dealing with digital technologies, posthumanism, and the representation of historically underrepresented groups. In 2019, Ms. Feijoo founded Human Esthetic Resources (HER) in order to create a 1000 m2 community that hosts artist studios and co-working spaces, a photo studio, and a larger and more flexible home for Exgirlfriend. Please join us September 6th for the second dual exhibitions of the 2019/2020 season.

https://www.estebanrivera.com/

www.aaikestuart.com

07-27 September 2019

Opening Reception

When: 06 September 2019, 7 pm - 10 pm

Where: Exgirlfriend Gallery Lankwitzer Str. 14, 12107 Berlin

Artists: Ben Murray (USA), Jeremy Bolen (USA)

Noisy Ghost is an exhibition by Ben Murray and Jeremy Bolen, focusing on exposing invisible forces created by the human condition. Through unconventional modes, both artists translate observations of the unknowable through the use of site as an apparatus or the performance of depiction.

Bolen's recent work focuses on our ability to observe radioactivity through site specific, experimental modes of photography and scientific investigation. Hovering between empirical recording and scientific measurement Bolen investigates The Morris Operation ––the only high level radioactive waste storage facility in the United States––holding 772 tons of spent nuclear fuel and sitting just 60 miles from the city of Chicago. To record the evolving, invisible energy surrounding the site Bolen employs buried film, asphalt, and the Advanced Photon Source Beam at Argonne National Laboratory (where Bolen became a "User" in 2014) to help extend our sensory capabilities and perceive the unseen.

Murray’s most recent paintings expand on the notion of recording memory by using historical conventions painting while looking to moving images as the subject. These homages to the works of experimental film icons such as Carolee Schneeman, Stan Brakhage and Hollis Frampton present complex atmospheric forms created from the films durational compositions. While they appear reminiscent of early American Abstract Expressionism, these paintings are in fact deceptively observational attempts to depict the films duration while they are being played in real time. Eventually, the linear narratives dissolve into a multi-layered surface of paint that confuses beginning and end. The result is an artifact of a performance that attempts to repeatedly capture the rapidly disappearing.

The intersections of these works diverge into other ghosts and ghost stories that the artists evoke through modes of painting, photography, sculpture and installation resulting in a nebulous experience where the viewer is engulfed in presences beyond normal sensory capabilities.

Exgirlfriend was founded by Elena Feijoo in 2016 as an exhibition space for contemporary art bounded by no rules but oriented towards conceptual work dealing with digital technologies, posthumanism, and the representation of historically underrepresented groups. In 2019, Ms. Feijoo founded Human Esthetic Resources (HER) in order to create a 1000 m2 community that hosts artist studios and co-working spaces and a larger and more flexible home for Exgirlfriend. Please join us September 6th for the second dual exhibitions of the 2019/2020 season.

http://ben-murray.com/

http://www.jeremybolen.com/

Grand Opening of the brand new HER artist studios building & Exgirlfriend Post-Renovation Launch Party/Retrospective Show

We warmly invite you to join us for the grand opening exhibition and celebration for the new Exgirlfriend gallery space and HER artist studio building on July 6th, 2019. 

HER studios is a brand new 1000 square meter non-profit artist studio building in the Alt-Mariendorf neighbourhood of Berlin. The space has developed 20 new rentable ateliers, alongside a cafe/kitchen, shared photo studio, and also boasting the new home of Exgirlfriend gallery. 

Exgirlfriend gallery, previously residing in Steglitz, has moved to the HER building to take over the 150 square meter exhibition space with an exciting lineup of emerging international artists for the 2019/2020 season. To introduce the public to the space, Exgirlfriend is hosting a retrospective exhibition consisting past Exgirlfriend artists which include works by:

Mit Borras

Vera Kox

Amir Chasson

Daniel Hundsdörfer

Jason Lazarus

Christopher Meerdo

Erin Mitchell

Olivia Lennon

Fiona Valentine Thomann
_______

The event will take place

Saturday July 6th 5pm-12pm

Exgirlfriend Gallery & HER studios

Lankwitzerstrasse 14

12107 Berlin, Germany

Each artist will be displaying one or multiple pieces that are distinctly their own in order to celebrate the past success of our gallery and associated artists while looking towards a strong future in the new space.

This retrospective show is also intended to celebrate the combined studio and gallery spaces themselves, as they represent a space of growth and support for both established and emerging artists and artist communities in and outside of Berlin.

Free Entry

Drinks will be available

Please join us in our effort to lift up and support a diverse and vibrant artist community in Berlin. 

Exgirlfriend & HER

We warmly invite you to Exgirlfriend's last exhibition of 2018 and the opening reception for

Double speaker

Ewa Doroszenko Jacek Doroszenko

November 17th - December 7th, 2018

Opening Reception

November 17th

19:00-22:00

To help the memory, we usually focus on the things that make sound – a guitar, a telephone, a motor vehicle, whatever – rather than sounds themselves. And the things that make sound usually give sounds their name. In the West we generally have no words that name sounds specifically. There is no word for the sound made by a guitar or a telephone or a motor vehicle, so we have to refer to the object that produced the sound to give the sound a name. And, because of this, people do not talk about sounds, they talk about objects that make sounds; they talk about ‘things’ and, consequently, sounds cease to be sounds and they become things.

-Robert Worby / composer & sound artist / BBC

For their first show in Berlin, Ewa Doroszenko and Jacek Doroszenko present “Double Speaker” - an exhibition manifesting as a common ground between the artists and as a physical and extra-sensory constellation. Inspired by soundscapes from different places in Europe, the exhibition invites us to explore and celebrate audio-visual experiences that are both very intimate and expansive. Exgirlfriend Gallery is transformed into the place where art directly catalyses the transition from synthetic images and digital sounds to painting or graphical music notations.

Both Ewa and Jacek are deeply involved in the revelation of a new aesthetic code, which is still in the process of being defined, according to the many possibilities arising from their multidimensional and complex practices. The exhibition reveals the artists' discussion on real existing landscapes, virtual environment, and soundscapes.

Ewa Doroszenko (b. 1983) is a Warsaw-based artist which creative practice employs a mixture of painting, photography and digital media. She earned a Doctor of Fine Arts degree (Painting Specialization) from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland. Ewa Doroszenko is a winner of the Competition for the Fait Gallery Preview 2016, Young Lynxes Competition 2018 - Contemporary Lynx, DEBUTS 2018 - doc! photo magazine, Debut 2018 - Lithuanian Photographers Association. She is a beneficiary of many residency programs, including: Petrohradska Kolektiv in Prague (Czech Republic 2018), Klaipeda Culture Communication Center (Lithuania 2017), Atelierhaus Salzamt in Linz (Austria 2016), The Island-resignified in Lefkada (Greece 2015), Kunstnarhuset Messen in Ålvik (Norway 2015), AAVC Hangar in Barcelona (Spain 2014), Fondazione Del Bianco in Florence (Italy 2006).

Ewa Doroszenko is a participant of many group exhibitions and festivals, such as Riga Photomonth, Transmission Arts Festival Athens, FILE Electronic Language International Festival in Sao Paulo, Interference Festival in Gdansk, ISEA International Symposium on Electronic Art in Vancouver, IN OUT Festival in Gdansk, GENERATE! Festival for Electronic Arts in Tübingen, The Wrong New Digital Art Biennale in Rio de Janeiro, among others. Her photographs have been featured in publications and blogs such as Der Greif, Vice, NEO2, The Forumist, YET magazine, The Calvert Journal, Daily Serving, Metal, Flat Magazine, Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography.

Website: www.ewa-doroszenko.com

Jacek Doroszenko (b. 1979) is a Warsaw-based artist active in the area of visual arts, working with sound and video. Graduated from the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, Poland. He is a beneficiary of many residency programs, including: Petrohradska Kolektiv in Prague (Czech Republic 2018), Klaipeda Culture Communication Center (Lithuania 2017), Atelierhaus Salzamt in Linz (Austria 2016),

The Island-resignified in Lefkada (Greece 2015), Kunstnarhuset Messen in Ålvik (Norway 2015), AAVC Hangar in Barcelona (Spain 2014), Fondazione Del Bianco in Florence (Italy 2006).
Jacek Doroszenko presented his works, projects and performed in numerous venues, among others: Matadero Contemporary Art Center in Madrid, Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Napoli, Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun, Pauza Gallery in Cracow, Historic Centre of Athens, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts in Vancouver, Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk, The Starak Family Foundation in Warsaw, Kasia Michalski Gallery in Warsaw, Institut für Alles Mögliche in Berlin, Fait Gallery in Brno, The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry, Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Krakauer Haus in Nürnberg, Propaganda Gallery in Warsaw, Oskar Schindler’s Factory in Cracow, FIESP Cultural Center – Ruth Cardoso in Sao Paulo. The artist performs solo music shows and plays in the Mammoth Ulthana duo.

Website: www.doroszenko.com

Come join us during Berlin Art Week in our booth at Positions Art Fair 2018

Exgirlfriend will be showing works by Vera Kox(b. 1984, Frankfurt/Main), Omsk Social Club(b.x, 19xx), and Mit Borrás(b.1982, Madrid) as well as smaller works by various Exgirlfriend artists. 

Exgirlfriend will also be participating in Positions Open Gallery night event showcasing our solo exhibition by Exgirlfriend artist Mit Borrás: more information coming soon

Berlin Art Week events, dates, and times found here

Positions Art Fair schedules and times found here

Mother Machine

Mit Borrás

September 22nd - October 13th

Opening Reception September 22nd @7pm

I share a locker room with six other pregnant women, each of us, in silence. We lubricate the skin of our bellies, tits and thighs with our hands or the massager balls. I look at the color of my nipples and compare them with those of my companions, they are all violet and we comment on it. The blue LED light of the locker room makes us look like inhabitants of Pandora;moon from the planet Polyphemus populated by humanoid creatures named Na'vi. We are waiting for Jake to come fuck away the afternoon. Jake does not arrive, so we keep putting cream on our coccyxes. We are dressed as goddesses of reproduction with metallic bodies, sidereal prints with galaxies, explosions of supernovas. We repeat the ritual every day at 8:00 pm, killing ourselves performing prenatal yoga exercises in the meditation room.

You can not put a limit on anything. “The more you dream, the further you get” is the slogan of this wellness center. The yoga group talks a lot about mind control, and there are magazines circulating about the importance of observing nature. We talk a long time about a text that deals with the life of mushrooms before Lilith, the monitor, begins the session with an invitation to breathe deep.

Just from hearing Lilith's voice, I enter a peaceful state. I can feel the fetus intensely, the head pressing my bladder and the feet close to my lungs; I perceive the birth canal as a polished lime-green cavern. The walls of the room twist and fade. The long legs of my yoga partner look like spider legs when she flexes her knees and touches the floor with her ass. There is an ultrasonic humidifier in a corner, they always fill it with essence of cinnamon and mint: this gives you the vibration of a spa that invites one to levitate. I fly over mountains of purple velvet and I fall into a transparent vessel full of mist and I vape it all. What an immense pleasure to fill my lungs and leave behind an innocuous white cloud. I have a hard belly all the time. We are done.

I always carry white tea and tangerines in my sports bag for after these sessions; that taste of health that I like so much and that I know will not come back. I walk with my knees loose to the exit, I chew strawberry gum like I'm drunk, I talk to the receptionist for a while and she reminds me that they have special courses to recover the figure after giving birth. I pay the 80 euros of the monthly payment and I put the receipt on my neckline, my tattooed neckline with the phrase Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back, from Nirvana.

The work of Mit Borrás is essentially installation;objects organized in the space which keep a surgical precision. The artist deals with issues related to the idea of progress and the aesthetic place occupied by technological devices. He works with plastics, silicones and various synthetic materials that offer a certain contemplative pleasure due to their soft ergonomic curves and the attractive adaptations of form. The precise flight pattern and apparent self-government of a drone along with the type of rotators and microprocessors of a medical prosthesis, play a decisive role for the artist when it comes to understanding his own work in motion.

The conception of nature in the work of Mit Borrás makes indivisible the natural and the artificial, implying that the fruits of science are as virtuous as the fruits of nature. From an anthropological point of view, the changes suffered by organisms to adapt to the environment are comparable to the efforts of science to provide us with a longer and more pleasant life. Underlying the artist’s work is the idea of eing immortal–not in terms of existing indefinitely but rather by living in harmony with the environment, achieving transcendence by accepting the acts of women and men as part of a search for stability and peace. The artist asks us as viewers to see ourselves as explorers of the state of minimum energy and maximum stability by using techniques such as chromotherapy and aromatherapy.

From the conviction that the animal kingdom adapts to nature just as humans adapt nature to their own needs, along with the consequences that implies, the artist works with objects of mass production designed for balance and anatomical accommodation. Borrás talks about humans as beings who modify, design, and “ergonomize” their bodies and environments, resulting in works that allude to reproductivity and sexuality from the most industrial and inorganic point of view.

Exgirlfriend Gallery (Berlin) presents the exhibition “Mother Machine” from September 22 to October 13. Using installations and videos, “Mother Machine” addresses topics related to technology and the idea of rogress, alluding to the processes of ergonomic transformation by which humans attempt to imitate the acts of adaptation that nature itself performs. Self-improvement robots as absent protagonists, the technological singularity serves as the engine of a work that constantly questions the division between what is biological and what is artificial.

Text by Rachel Lamot

---

Exgirlfriend Gallery

Holsteinischestrasse 18

12161 Berlin 

exgirlfriendberlin.com

+49 151 63214644

Traversing the Threshold

Liat Grayver

July 14th–August 4th 2018

Opening Reception July 14th @7pm

Room Installation of Robotics-Assisted Calligraphic Works and Videos in Collaboration with the e-David Project (University of Konstanz) and Video Artist Marcus Nebe

Traversing the Threshold presents robotic paintings by the artist Liat Grayver and video works made by and in collaboration with the media artist Marcus Nebe, who has been following Grayver’s collaboration with the e-David painting robot over the last two years. The works presented here stretch into and expose the temporal and physical space of the artist’s creative process through the mediums of painting and video.

What could have been executed as one painting constructed of thousands of brushstrokes has instead been decomposed and distributed over numerous sheets of rice paper. Grayver cropped different sections of the master particle generator image and translated the individual particles into single brushstrokes (assigning parameters such as, for example, the size, length, pressure and speed variation of the strokes), before sending it to the robot for the final execution.

The individual paper works are extracted from a complex of computer-generated particles (Simulation of a World Overview) according to Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. Scaled to different sizes, each can be viewed not only as an individual work but also as part of the modular wall installation. Nebe’s video compositions utilize close-up footage he made of the ink and paper interacting as Grayver created the works, offering intriguing temporal perspectives on the material’s response and impact on the act of painting.

The fragility of the ink-infused rice paper work in particular stands in sharp contrast to the industrial robot used to create them. As with Japanese calligraphy (the reference is obvious and undeniable), the brush trajectories and the ink’s behaviour as it penetrates the surface are here of several magnitudes more importance than the perception of the object itself.

Liat Grayver (Israel, 1986) graduated from the Art Academy of Leipzig (Diplom-MFA) in the class of Heribert C. Ottersbach (painting). Currently she is a Meisterschülerin (post-graduate) in the class of Joachim Blank (media art). Since February 2016, Grayver has been collaborating with the University of Konstanz on the e-David Project exploring various approaches to integrating robotic and computer languages in the processes of painting and creative image-making. http://www.liatgrayver.com

Marcus Nebe (1985) received his diploma of fine arts in 2015 at the Art Academy of Leipzig in the class of Helmut Mark (media art). His works can be found in public and private collections. In the last decade, he has shown his works throughout Germany and in international exhibitions. He lives and works in Leipzig and Berlin. http://www.marcusnebe.com

The e-David painting robot, developed at the University of Konstanz by Oliver Deussen, is a pioneer project in this field and was one of the first to use a visual feedback system. The possibility of visual feedback brings up many questions within the contemporary discourse on deep learning, artificial intelligence and robotic creativity. http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/eDavid

Botanics
Nele Stroebel & Christina Paetsch
June 9th 2018 - June 30th 2018
Opening Reception: June 9th @7pm

Finissage: June 29th, @7pm
exgirlfriendberlin.com


"Botanics" is informed by the three dimensional order systems found in natural and bionic structures.
Independently exploring artificial -and the intersection with natural- frameworks, this will be the first exhibition of both Christina Paetsch and Nele Ströbel's work together in a spacial conversation. Both artists have been living and working in Berlin for over two decades. 

The exhibition's installation echoes the concept of a three dimensional chamber, a spacial conversation between photo works, terracotta sculptures, bricolage, and drawings. 
Nele Ströbel received her MA in Sculpture at the College of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria in 1984 and completed her Meisterjahr in 1985. She received the Karl Buchrucker Prize for Fine Arts in 2002 and her work can be found in several public and private collections, as well as receiving the 2016 First prize for sculpture in Treptower Park, Berlin for a public installation. 
http://www.nele-stroebel.de/

Christina Paetsch(1963) was born and raised in the Neukölln district of Berlin not far from her current atelier on Fuldastrasse. Paetsch obtained her Masters in Fine Arts from the Berlin University of the Arts in 1992 and has shown her works throughout Germany and abroad. 
http://www.christina-paetsch.de/

Opening Reception: 8 September 2017 @ 19.00
Running from 9/9/17-29/9/17

Exgirlfriend Gallery
Holsteinische Str. 18, 12161 Berlin
contact@exgirlfriendberlin.com

For his first solo show in Berlin, Christopher Meerdo explores various modes of subjugation and subversion relative to our asymmetrical relationship with networked technologies.

This new body of work is derived from circumventions of restricted and administrative areas accessed through the dark web. More specifically, the recent projects 'White Hot' and 'Blaze/Chill' are augmentations of files derived from hidden systems designed to collect and control bodies as subjects for metadata analysis.

For White Hot, photogrammetry modeled sculptures sit atop their corresponding United States Air Force drone videos. The videos, accessed through TOR channels, reveal testing and training procedures being implemented on US citizens. This includes the practice targeting of individuals outside a medical care center and on a long combination vehicle (LCV) semi truck. The term “white hot” is commonly used by Remotely Operated Aircraft Sensor Operators; the etymology stemming from the bright white representation of body heat when viewed with interfered targeting scopes mounted to drones as part of Multi-Spectral Targeting Systems.

The resulting sculptures, originating from the video frames, are deconstructed using a slicing technique and reconstructed by hand. Each sculpture is hydroprinted with collages derived from images collected during the researching of the project.

Using similar methods of retrieval, the series Blaze/Chill is an excerpt from a collection of roughly 5400 infrared photographs produced by embedded facial recognition (EFR) security cameras. International in scope, the resulting photographs from this specific camera system uses a database of stored facial profiles to create unique identifiers for workers to gain building access or to log in and out of work each day. Similar to Workers leaving the Lumière Factory, here the camera has shifted from a casual observer, to being instrumentalized as a method of control and subjugation through highly precise individualized administration. 

Christopher Meerdo (b.1981) is a Chicago based artist who grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Lithuania. Meerdo’s work was recently featured in a year-long solo exhibition at the Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art. He is the Fellowship 15 International Award winner for his projects Iceland and Cataphote, was an artist in residence at the SIM Program in Reykjavik, Iceland and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2013. Meerdo received his MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago and currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include The National Gallery of Kosovo, The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, IL); CocoHunday (Tampa, FL); Floating Museum (Chicago, IL), Cabinet Magazine (Brooklyn, NY); LVL3 Gallery (Chicago, IL), Second Street Gallery (Charlottesville, VA); SIM Gallery (Reykjavik, Iceland) and a traveling exhibition in Birmingham and Leicester, UK. Meerdo is represented by DOCUMENT Gallery in Chicago.

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