HOKUSPOKUS
an exhibition about illusion, mirage and other phenomena
with
SILKE BALTRUSCHAT (DE), RENKE BRANDT (DE), JORGE CHAMORRO (ES), TOBIAS DOSTAL (DE), DUNJA JANKOVIĆ (CR), PIA-MÉLISSA LAROCHE (FR), CARO MANTKE (DE), NIETO (CO), DORON SADJA (US), ANNEKATHRIN SCHREIBER (DE), EMIR ŠEHANOVIĆ (SB), ROBERTA WJM ANDREUCCI (IT), MARKUS WÜSTE (DE)
CURATED BY
Caro Mantke, Jorge Chamorro, Anelor Robin
DURATION
11 January – 1 February 2019
Opening hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 4 – 7pm or on appointment
DATE
11 January 2019, 7pm – 11pm
Opening & Performance by ROBERTA WJM ANDREUCCI
1 February 2019, 7pm – 11pm
Finissage & Performance by DORON SADJA
HOKUSPOKUS
an exhibition about illusion, mirage and other phenomena
“There Is No Truth. There Is Only Perception.” – Gustave Flaubert
It’s hot. It's steamy. You’re not really sure where you are. You’re not sure about the sounds you're hearing. The information that you discern seems misstated. Are you delusional? Are you victim of hallucination? Your vision is blurred and you’re not really sure what you’re seeing. Is that a giraffe standing at the bar or just the legs of a stool? You’re not really sure of anything anymore. At the bar, you pick a strawberry but the flavor seems to be more pungent than fruity. Is this a scientific conference or just a prank? Is that the artist? Really? Is that the artist you’re seeing or just a hologram he sent for the opening? Images shimmer like mirages in front of your eyes. A drop of sweat drips from your cheek and an ambiguous smile sets shape on your face. Yes that’s right, you have reached the entrance to Hokuspokus. An endless room of crooked mirrors. Dream or reality? Illusion or truth? This is a shadowy place, where there is no such thing as objectivity, and your own eyes are not to be trusted.
Hokuspokus invites you to enter an artistic chimera whose works call on you to squint, peek, blink, and otherwise contort your vision. What is a dream if not a collage of different realities, contexts, and objects which together make no apparent sense. We conceive this exhibition as a menagerie of visual traps, filled with artworks that challenge our perceptions and make us question the supposed truth in what we see, and to therefore consider the possibility of multiple realities. We want to give an enchantment, a counterpart to reality and an invitation to open your third eye. Things previously unknown to you will appear to reveal themselves in an epiphany. We oppose illusion and truth - the illusion masks the truth, and stops us from seeing things as they are. But maybe we should consider the illusion or the dream as a path to the veracity. This exhibition endeavors to present all known possible evidence as to what an illusion can be, from an imperfection of the senses, to an optical trick or magical phenomena.
Exhibition view
TOBIAS DOSTAL, Hieronymus tanzen, 2019, Dimension variable, Acryl, LED´s, Metall, elektronische Schaltung
TOBIAS DOSTAL, Dia-Mond, Edition Auflage 10, 2018,Acryl, LED´s, elektronische Schaltung, 30 x 40 x 1,6 cm
CARO MANTKE, Tischzauberei, 2018_19, collage installation (detail)
PIA-MÉLISSA LAROCHE, Les Futuribles - series, 2016, Drawings, lead pencil on paper, 19,8 x 28 cm.
RENKE BRANDT, Aus überbackenen Zeiten, 2011-2018, 60 Photographies and Collages
Exhibition view
F.l.t.r. : DUNJA JANKOVIĆ, The Feedbackground Entities, Screen prints, series a print collaboration with ARARA print collective from Porto, Portugal.100 x 70cm; MARKUS WÜSTE, Silver Lining 2018, GREY Granite cobbles stone Installation; JORGE CHAMORRO, Hokuspokus, 2018, collages, Double, 2017-2018, collages
Exhibition view. Left: NIETO, Carlitopolis, 2005, video, Lazare, 2009, video, MINEAPOLIS, 2011, video, Applied Metacinema, 2014, video, SUS MUS, 2012, video, Q&A, 2011, video, Nietoscopy, 2006, video; Center: EMIR ŠEHANOVIĆ, UNTITLED, 2019, video, loop 19’ 51”, no sound, monitor, textile cable, polymer clay. Dimension variable; Right: DUNJA JANKOVIĆ, The Feedbackground Entities, Screen prints, series a print collaboration with ARARA print collective from Porto, Portugal.100 x 70cm
F.l.t.r.: NIETO, Carlitopolis, 2005, video, Lazare, 2009, video, MINEAPOLIS, 2011, video, Applied Metacinema, 2014, video, SUS MUS, 2012, video, Q&A, 2011, video, Nietoscopy, 2006, video; Center: DUNJA JANKOVIĆ, The Feedbackground Entities, Screen prints, series a print collaboration with ARARA print collective from Porto, Portugal.100 x 70cm; Right: EMIR ŠEHANOVIĆ, UNTITLED, 2019, video, loop 19’ 51”, no sound, monitor, textile cable, polymer clay. Dimension variable.
ANELOR ROBIN, Miroir aux alouettes, 2016, Installation
Left: EMIR ŠEHANOVIĆ, UNTITLED, 2019, video, loop 19’ 51”, no sound, monitor, textile cable, polymer clay. Dimension variable.; Right: SILKE BALTRUSCHAT, Magicology, 2018, Installation
Photo by @guillaume.guerin.artist
ARTIST TALK
13 January 2019, 4pm
We invite you to an artist talk with EMIR ŠEHANOVIĆ and more to tba
- free coffee & cake -
More about the artist talk here
WORKSHOP
19 January, 3pm Hokuspocus “collage” workshop
Caro Mantke, Jorge Chamorro, Anelor Robin, curators of the exhibition join their skills to give an exceptional workshop. We will train and experiment different collage technique and unusual tools, materials to create bizarre images.
Fee: 25 euros included materials registration: anelor.robin@gmail.com
More about the workshop here
GUIDED TOUR
26 January 2019, 5pm
free
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HOKUSPOKUS / Artist Talk
EMIR ŠEHANOVIĆ in conversation with VANESSA SOULI
Sunday 13th January at 4pm, gr_und, Seestrasse 49, 13347 Berlin
As part of the exhibition we would like to invite you to join us to an artist talk where we will introduce and question Emir Šehanović’s works and open a discussion and a dialogue on illusion and how images are created and are perceived.
EMIR ŠEHANOVIĆ was born in 1981 in Tuzla, Bosnia & Herzegovina. In the late ’90s he was already active in the local street art scene under the pseudonym Aorta. His biography is full of multi-faceted activities – from street art projects to solo and collective exhibitions. Emir has received international recognition for his mural projects, video, digital prints and multimedia. Pagan tradition, superstition and the occult are some of the constant themes present in his work. The final result may be a collage, print or spatial intervention, based in the digital domain but including specific materials which have a deep cultural value for its creator. Space is given special treatment in his works, be it an intervention in a public space or a classic format of a painting.
VANESSA SOULI is a visual artist manager, writer and curator based in Berlin. She holds a BA in Literature from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and an MA in Arts & Heritage Management from Maastricht University. She currently manages established and emerging artists on a freelance basis and she writes articles for various art magazines.
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