after the butcher is a project space by artists for artists. Those invited to do a show will be asked to develop a work for this space. The showroom will be an opportunity and platform to present work of not so well-known artists. We are very much looking forward to a good collaboration with the artists and other cultural laborers in Berlin. [MORE]
Spittastr. 25, 10317 Berlin open by appointment or at events
After The Butcher, showroom for contemporary art and social issues, is happy to invite you and your friends to a performance of American artist Jeremiah Day, marking the 20th anniversary of the largest protests in human history on 15 February 2003.
Both the largest gathering of people in political action in one place, Rome, and as well the largest coordination of people internationally assembled in opposition to the US-plans to invade Iraq. 15 million people in the streets of 800 cities on every continent participated.
The World Social Forum and thousands of anti-war initiatives paved the way for this action, whose meaning cannot be limited to its usefulness.
The democratic protest against the US government and its war coalition did not prevent the war, which unfolded in violation of international law. This war marks a corner stone in recent political history. It has brought neither democracy to Iraq nor peace to the Gulf region; on the contrary, it has fuelled radical Islamism, increased social contradictions in the region and triggered new refugee movements. The seeming acceptance of this aggression also bears greatly on other violations of international law that followed in the years after, those today – as in Ukraine, and those potentially to come.
The Exhibition Aggregatzustände will be open after the Performance until 10pm
*Sharing as Caring is a project that reflects on the current conditions of nuclear presence in planetary perspective. The project began in 2012 with a series of small-scale exhibitions. It explores the political, economic, psychological and personal longings associated with nuclear presence. https://miyayoshida.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/HDKV_SAC-Zeitung_Screen.pdf
Jamila Barakat, Mengna Tan, Eva Ďurovec and Nikita Kadan
Opening Friday, April 1, from 7 pm
Exhibition: April, 2 – May, 15 2022
Finissage: Sunday, May 15, from 3-6pm
Open by appointment: mailto@after-the-butcher.de or +49 178 3298 106 30 April, 6pm: Book Launch „New Mind Mapping Forms“ by Eva Ďurovec
In the exhibition rooms, please keep your distance and wear mouth and nose masks.
After the Butcher, Showroom for Contemporary Art and Social Issues is happy to present its next exhibition “String Figures” with artists Jamila Barakat, Mengna Tan, Eva Ďurovec and Nikita Kadan.
In Donna Haraways “Staying With The Trouble“, one figure is omnipresent: SF. This figuration seems to be more than just an abbreviation. It seems to be a subject that opens up different opportunities and methods, thought experiments and common practices of exchange and interaction. Cross-species practices that sometimes work, sometimes fail, are active and sometimes stay still. Like string figures, they propose and enact patterns for participants to inhabit, somehow, on a vulnerable and wounded earth. Haraway describes the figure with the letters SF that can be: Science Fiction, speculative fabulation, string figures, speculative feminism, science fact, so far…
“I think of sf and string figures in a triple sense of figuring. First, promiscuously plucking out fibers in clotted and dense events and practices, I try to follow the threads where they lead in order to track them and find their tangles and patterns crucial for staying with the trouble in real and particular places and times.” D.H.
By playing string figures, new patterns or images are formed that reveal new entanglements and interconnections.
In the exhibition “String figures” the artists are tracing SF by working, failing and exploring themes and contexts of speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, science fiction and so far… A dialogue with each other begins, connections with each other emerge. While we prepare this exhibition the Russian regime under Putin launched its war against Ukraine. For this reason we decided to pick up another thread: we invited the Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan (he has to protect himself in Kiev against Russian bombing) to join the exhibition. We are happy to be able to show two of his wonderful charcoal drawings from the series „Minsk Masks“ in String Figures*). In this respect, SF may also be read as a sign against war: stay friends or seid friedlich (be peaceful) instead of Strike Forces.
*) Nikita Kadan writes: “I found these ‘masks’ in ornaments on the ceiling of the Minska station of the Kyiv Metro since I was six years old. They were really scary, and I felt that I could always find new ones. The ornamental composition “Tree of Life”, based on Belarusian folk ornaments, was created by the artists Stepan and Vasyl Khymochka in 1982, the year I was born. Much later I found out that Belarus was historically associated with a partisan movement – these associations can give new meaning to the camouflaged faces hidden among the floral motifs.” These drawings are very topical in that metro stations such as Minska station in Kiev at the moment serve as shelters from Russian shelling and bombardment….
atb#89 | Quirin Bäumler, Isabelle Fein und Selou Sowe
Opening: Friday, February 18, from 7pm
Exhibition: February 19 – March 27, 2022
Open by appointment: after the butcher or +49 (0)1783 298 106. Please wear a medical mouth and nose protection.
About the Exhibition:
Quirin Bäumler, Isabelle Fein and Selou Sowe
18 February to 27 March 2022 at after the butcher, Berlin
Everything is connected with each other. Some time ago we might have rolled our eyes in exasperation at this sentence, inhaling and exhaling in a contorted yoga pose. In the past two years, however, this wisdom has been made bitterly clear to us. How do humans, nature and technology influence each other, and what are the consequences for the macro and microcosms of the world? In this group exhibition, we look at that triangle from various axes of vision, zooming in on small, fleeting relationships and using a wide angle to grasp the power of globalization. The question of how the individual subject influences these connections is made material in the three artistic positions presented, as an interplay of control and chance.
Let’s start with the microcosm: Isabelle Fein’s paintings and sculptures examine brief moments and constellations that either come to her by chance from the outside, for instance found photographs, or that she draws from within herself. Sometimes symbolist in nature, sometimes surreally humorous, her figures and animals emerge from the thin layers of pastel hues before us, communicating with us. Still lifes with brush, newspaper and cups of paint trace her work as an artist: it is a solitary but also meditative activity in which digressions from everyday life are intentional.
Fein’s compositions carry something secure in them, which we can also discover in Quirin Bäumler’s sculptures. His three reliefs on view are made of hard plaster, showing lonely dreamy figures, animals or even a firmament of stars. Like screen monitors, they reproduce an excerpt—a still image from life—which Bäumler has alienated and fixed. While here the material has been cast, shaped and removed through a long, laborious process, his drawings are created intuitively, a psychogram of the moment. Predominated by motifs of death and mourning, we see the traces of two tragic pandemic years.
Away from man, now, and towards the machine. Selou Sowe’s sculptures shimmer in a place between technical progress and industrial decay. They are objects that can hardly be classified: are we dealing with something organic or inorganic here? Is this thing still of this world or has it fallen from outer space? With a view to global connections and informatic achievements, Sowe’s video work shows the similarities between man-made systems and natural structures which have become clearer with advances in worldwide networking. In found-footage images overlaid with his own 3-D animations, an artificial voice-over raises the question of whether the demise of destructive power structures in a supposedly decentralized world would mean our salvation.
This group exhibition is the first part of a long-term cooperation between After the Butcher and the young artists’ group Interspace Collective.
Interspace Collective includes: Isra Abdou, Jamila Barakat, Frank Jimin Hopp, Heiko Thandeka Ncube, Selou Sowe, Mengna Tan, Laura Suryani Thedja and Alungoo Xatan.
Text: Nadja Abt
Translation German/English: Michael Baers
after the butcher explicitly is in support of the open letter
Who Owns the Public? on the so-called “Kunsthalle Berlin”/Tempelhof
Exhibition: November 27, 2021 – January 30, 2022 Opening: Friday November 26, 2021, 7-11 p.m. Finissage: Sunday, January 30, 2022 from 3-6 p.m.
Viewing by appointment only: ina@after-the-butcher.de or mobile: +49(0)178-3298106 Social distancing measures must be observed in the gallery spaces and wearing a medical mask is compulsory.
The exhibition Palimpsest / Reading Between the Signs develops a visual dialogue between the works of Berlin-based Haitian-American artist Jean-Ulrick Désert and Glasgow-based Irish-Canadian artist Ciara Phillips.
Jean-Ulrick Désert takes up in his work, developed for this exhibition, a political action at the Berlin Wall from 1978 by the filmmaker Wieland Speck (1992-2017 Director of the Panorama of the Berlin Film Festival) and the artist Per Lüke, which immediately triggered a surveillance investigation file called “The Harpist” (Der Harfenspieler) by the GDR’s State Security Police. For his installation Désert selected 12 sheets from the Stasi files, digitized them and burned them in linen to create ‘modern ruins’. The data from this Stasi surveillance and Désert’s research generated four astrological circular terracotta forms. They mark the star constellations and the astrological configurations taken from the 13 August 1978, 16:15, the day of the political action. Another disk marks the life span of the surveillance and yet another disk marks the collaborative dynamics of Per Lüke & Wieland Speck. Together with the picture panels they create a poetic palimpsest and a tension between personal and public, analogue and digital or physical and metaphysical realities.
For this exhibition, Ciara Phillips foregrounds clothing as a site of social engagement and meaning. Sewing has long been an artistic practice for Phillips, realized in parallel with her graphic print work. Printed textiles are often part of her complex spatial installations. Phillips explores the myriad ways in which print intersects with our daily lives, whether through media, advertising, banknotes, or clothing. Everywhere, print products act as important validators and signifiers. Phillips spent 4 weeks in residency at Lichtenberg Studios developing new works for this exhibition which draws on, among other things, the centuries- old history of textile and clothing manufacturing in Lichtenberg.
Ciara Phillips works mainly in print and her approach is both expansive and experimental. She often works collaboratively, transforming galleries into working printshops and inviting other artists, designers and local community groups to work with her. She has exhibited at: Tate Britain; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; Benaki Museum, Athens; Hamburg Kunstverein; and Kunsthall Stavanger. In 2014 she was nominated for the Turner Prize, and in 2020 was awarded the Queen Sonja Print Award in Oslo.
Jean-Ulrick Désert works in different media: posters, actions, paintings, site-specific sculptures and video. In 2019 Jean-Ulrick Désert represented his native country Haiti at the 58th Venice Biennale in the same year he showed Unfinished Histories Vol.IV, at the Franziskanerkirche Monastery Ruins, Berlin. In 2013, Amour Colère Folie, Art Commission, Martinique Biennale, Martinique; 2015 Belgian Soliloquy, Platform 102, Brussels; Jean-Ulrick Désert, Espace d’art Contemporain 14°N 61°W, Martinique; 2018 Jean-Ulrick Désert, S12 Studio, Select World Project Gallery, New York. He was a participant in the 10th Havana Biennial, Cuba, in 2009. Désert founded his Berlin studio in 2002. www.jeanulrickdesert.com Jean-Ulrick Désert is the first recipient of the Wi Di Mimba Wi :: AKB & SAVVY Contemporary Award: www.e-flux.com
Exhibition: 16. October – 14. November 2021 Opening: Friday 15. October 2021, from 7 p.m. on Finissage: Sunday November 14, from 3-7 p.m.
With its upcoming exhibition The Few, The Many, after the butcher is delighted to present two contemporary artistic perspectives from New York and Brussels. For the exhibition at after the butcher, New York-based artist Bernadette Van-Huy produced a new twelve-part photographic drawing series titled Turn the Mirror Upside Down. The self-portraits, accompanied by a wall text in the form of a mirror-written instruction for action, are about an outlaw, a book, outer space, an Asian, and a homemade perm.
At the invitation of after the butcher Belgian film artist Herman Asselberghs made Now(After Empire Remix)(video, color, 16:9, English, BE, 2021, 18’), a remix version of his video After Empire from 2010. In After Empire, Herman Asselberghs suggested an alternative for the iconic image that collective memory has kept as the quintessential moment of recent history: the worldwide anti-war demonstration on the 15th of February 2003 instead of two towers collapsing on the island of Manhattan. Today, a decade, a commemoration of 9/11 and many marches all over the globe later, the filmmaker presents a remix version by providing part of the initial images with a new, contemporary soundtrack by Simon Halsberghe and Wiet Lengeler.
At the occasion of the exhibition, butchers blätter #3will be published next to the online format as well as a print edition, with contributions by Dieter Lesage, Andreas Siekmann and Ina Wudtke.
Bernadette Van-Huy is a founding member of Bernadette Corporation. She has also been working artistically under her own name for several years and exhibits internationally. She lives and works north of New York, USA.
Film artist Herman Asselberghs (°1962) explores border zones between text, sound and image, world and media, poetics and politics. Over the past two decades, his film and installation works have been shown internationally. He teaches at the film department of LUCA School of Arts – Sint-Lukas Brussel and is a founding member of the Brussels production platform Auguste Orts (augusteorts.be). He lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
With the kind support of:
Ausstellungsraum für zeitgenössische Kunst und soziale Fragen
