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.