STYX Project Space

Dear Friends!
STYX Project Space is pleased to present the first German solo exhibition of Jacqueline Brown.
In her drawings, installations, videos, and sculptures, Brown turns an inquisitive eye on nature and its strange formations. Rather than relying on the clichés of German or English Romanticism in grasping for some lofty implications of truth within the sublime, Brown largely focuses her concerns on the manipulation of natural phenomena by humans for normative purposes that often seem comical or simply bizarre upon closer inspection.
Cultivating material from the English countryside, where Brown spent her childhood, the artist’s interest in hunting as sport led to the creation of 38 ½ Couple, a video work that documents the “hidden lives” of a clan of hounds as they await the next hunt. The presence of the camera, of course – and the artist behind it – imbues the hounds with a self-consciousness and curiosity they would otherwise lack, while the supplemental pieces – a video listing each of the dogs’ names and an audio interview with their trainer – further situates these hounds’ lives as an extension of a larger human project.
Brown’s training as a sculptor emerges at the forefront of her large drawings of conifer trees. The artist takes photographs in the forest of a seemingly infinite hatch of foliage, then “edits” her footage – effectively sculpting the material – into peculiar shapes that are then drawn on paper in painstakingly exquisite detail. Even here, seemingly undisturbed nature is not allowed to rest; rather, it is the artist herself who intervenes, mimicking an act of God through her re-structuring of flora.
More recently, Brown has taken inspiration from the urban environs of her new home, Berlin. Walking the streets shortly after the Christmas holiday, Brown became fascinated by the discarded Christmas trees laid out on the streets awaiting rubbish collection. In their state of abandonment, Brown became curious as to the human lives they temporarily enriched, even going so far as to scribbling the street address of each one she “discovered” in her diary. At STYX Project Space, Brown will premiere this new series of miniature drawings, which, again, implies a poignant instrumental usage on the human side of the equation.
Through her sculptures, video, and extensive drawings, Brown’s voyage as an artist has been spurred on by an inquisitive curiosity as to the ways in which we interact with the world we have inherited. The real accomplishment of Jacqueline Brown’s “New Naturalism,” though, may be the artist’s anti-programmatic approach towards her subjects – a process that isolates and substantiates fragments taken from a confused and often violent world.
Jacqueline Brown (*1982, Oxford, UK) studied at the Royal College of Art in London (MA Sculpture, 2007) and the Winchester School of Art in Hampshire (BA Hons Fine Art Sculpture, 2004.) Her work has been exhibited throughout the UK and abroad. In 2007, she was short-listed for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries. That year, she also took first prize for short film at the Totnes Short Film Festival. Brown currently lives and works in Berlin.
Opening Reception: 29 April 2009 7-10 pm
Closing Reception: 29 May 2009, 7-10 pm
STYX Project Space
Old Brewery Friedrichshöhe (2nd floor)
Landsberger Allee 54
10249 Berlin
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Dear Friends!
STYX Project Space is proud to present the first German solo exhibition of New York-based multimedia artist and musician Gio Black Peter, “This is My Gun.”
If New York in the 21st century suffers from an identity crisis mitigated by a myriad of social, economic, and political factors, the city’s countercultural life has managed to maintain an edge thanks to the work of multi-faceted artists such as Gio Black Peter. He continues a legacy of outsiderdom that refuses assimilation into the mainstream American culture industry, while simultaneously exploiting the fruitlessness of such conceptual binaries, effectively producing a medium-spanning oeuvre, the accessibility of which lies in its very roughness.
Born Giovanni Paolo Andrade Guevara in 1979, Gio immigrated with his family to New York at the age of five from Guatemala. In the words of the artist, “I’ve been making art for as long as I’ve been pissing. When I was a little boy I spent my time fucking, drawing, and writing stories.”
After spending much of his adolescence hanging out in New York’s club scene, Gio first entered the spotlight as the star of James Bolton’s independent feature film, Eban and Charley, in 2000. Since then, he has pursued art and music in equal measures, while occasionally returning to his acting roots, most notably as co-star of Bruce LaBruce’s Otto; or, Up with Dead People!
The visual universe of Gio Black Peter engages in equal measures with the highly sexualized politics of queer outsider culture and the colorful syntax of the street. He is prone to using a combination of found materials, such as New York City subway maps, and traditional media, such as acrylics and oils, in creating a cacophonous deluge of collages, installations, paintings, and drawings. Many of the works shown in Berlin were created specifically for the exhibition at STYX Project Space.
In addition to his solo output, Gio Black Peter also collaborates with artists Slava Mogutin and Brian Kenny as part of the artist group SPUTNIK 3.
In 2008, Gio’s band, the Black Peter Group, released their first EP. Co-written and produced by Andrew “Friendly” Kornweibel, It’s Fucked Up! fuses such diverse musical influences as punk rock and hillbilly 2-step into a collection of highly danceable tracks and features Gio’s distinctive vocals. Like Gio’s artwork, It’s Fucked Up! is reminiscent of the old New York – a graffiti-covered urban jungle where a feeling of lawlessness reigned and every night out promised a wild new adventure.
Thus, an exhibition of Gio Black Peter is perfectly suited to the city of Berlin, which has in recent years garnered comparisons to New York in its glory days, and more specifically the squat-like environs of STYX Project Space, where street style meets the white cube. The opening of “This is My Gun” will feature a live performance by Gio.
Opening and Performance by Gio Black Peter: 20th February 2009 19-22h
Finissage: 6th March 2009, 19-22h
STYX Project Space
Old Brewery Friedrichshöhe (2nd floor)
Landsberger Allee 54
10249 Berlin
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On Thursday, 4th December STYX and hairentertainment.com will host a night of performance sound & video art with:
James Blackshaw
www.myspace.com/jamesblackshaw
Seiji Morimoto
www.myspace.com/seijimorimoto
Vstavai
www.myspace.com/vstavai
Please join us at 9pm
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Dear Friends!
STYX Project Space is pleased to present three international artists in a cross media context. Sue de Beer, Derek Holzer and SIX will be showing from the 7th to 28th of November 2008.
In the Pervateen series, London born, Prague based photographer SIX highlights aspects of Czech youth culture and underground movements, previously relatively little known in the West. The portraits spanning several years bring social outsiders into focus, always matter of fact and close to the protagonists; showing us demanding, brash glances; disruption caused by the drug Pervertin; affliction and resentment drowned out by cool Dean- and Brando- gestures.
Injuries, physical and mental, are visibly part of these poses: lacerated, pale skin and numbed gazes begin to function as trophy status, turn from irregularity to matter of course and finally become components of integral, irreversible self. The visual language resonates with advertorial and fashion aesthetics, helped by the stylised typography and colour choices of the photographer. What serves as tools for staging individuality and glamour in advertising and fashion, sees a re-interpretation in SIX’ work that generates authenticity. The unconditional closeness to the subjects enables the photographer to portray their individuality with all its vulnerability and fading innocence. At the same time his aesthetic choices and use of space allows the youths to present themselves self-confidently in their adolescent beauty.
Teenage inner worlds and their abysses are also a recurring theme in the work of American Sue de Beer. The exhibition will show select stills of her film Hans und Grete, realized in Berlin. Instead of internalised aggressions and fears, and the production of a self-confident pose without alternative, she looks at the projection of suppressed emotions resulting in assumed self destruction and destruction of the hated environment. Her processes zoom in on narcissistic moments and the forceful demand for prestige. Characteristic for de Beers work is the play with dark fantasy elements and a use of horror movie aesthetic, or one close to Goth and Metal movements. Her stills emphasise the emotional captivity and contraction of perspectives experienced by her characters.
The installations of American sound artist Derek Holzer react to the hidden resonance bodies in objects and spaces. The sounds are those that could develop in the space, but also those, which the room makes possible via objects and a multiplicity of known and new instruments. His two performances, at the opening and finissage of the exhibition, will see him conduct a room-filling installation of piano chords; leaving the tightrope walk between narrowness of the project space and freedom of sound to the spectator for the duration of the exhibition.
STYX project space is an independent gallery space in the former brewery Friedrichshöhe, a building which was left unused until recently since 1990. The current exhibition is part of an interdisciplinary event series, which aside visual art also presents musical performances and readings.
Opening and Performance by Derek Holzer: 7th November, 2008 19-22h Finissage and Performance by Derek Holzer: 28th November 2008, 19-22h
STYX project space
Old Brewery Friedrichshöhe (2nd floor)
Landsberger Allee 54
10249 Berlin
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CLOSING RECEPTION - JEREMIAH PALECEK
Wednesday, 8 October, 7-10 pm
Jeremiah Palecek - Straight Outta Naperville (2006)
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PERFORMANCE BY TENNESSEE CLAFLIN
Friday, 26 September, 7 pm
Join us on Friday night for a fiery performance by wild child Tennessee Claflin.
Writer, activist and performance artist Claflin was Born in Boise, Idaho and spent most of his young life in Salt Lake City before moving to Los Angeles at the age of seventeen. Since then he has lived and worked in several cities around the world including New York, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Istanbul, Madrid and Portland, Oregon. He is now based in Berlin.
STYX project space
Old Brewery Friedrichshöhe (2nd floor)
Landsberger Allee 54
10249 Berlin
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JEREMIAH PALECEK - PAINTINGS
3 September - 8 October
"Suburban Black Helicopters", Jeremiah Palecek, 2005
Dear Friends!
The third of September will see the opening of the first solo exhibition by Prague based artist Jeremiah Palecek at STYX oroject space.
The US American national Palecek has attracted attention through his simultaneous activity as blogger and painter.
In his figurative paintings the artist reacts subtly to the iconography of digital media: many of his paintings depicts stills taken from videogames, sections of user interface or fragments of HTML code.
Palecek has coined the term ‘Nerd Arts’ for this type of aesthetic production, which also shapes the artist’s self-perception. The specific logic of digital communication moreover governs the distribution of the work: Palecek consistently paints one painting per day and immediately publicizes these on his blog, through which they are also sold.
The choice of subject matter is often reactive or incidental, combining references to the artist’s surroundings or resulting from interaction with other internet users.
Often they are also phenomena of the digitally mediated day to day, particularly stereotypes of the American ‘way of life’ that are at the centre of Palececk’s work: scenes of family and suburban life are transformed to allegories of temporal and social absolute zero.
In these moments of forced stillness the seemingly real and familiar begins to slip into the uncanny; boundaries of a recognizable fiction become porous. Clichés that were previously held dear tip into monstrosity, fissures pervade a normality that seemed safe.
STYX project space is an independent gallery space in the former brewery Friedrichshöhe, a building which was left unused until recently since 1990. The current exhibition is part of an interdisciplinary event series, which aside visual art also presents musical performances and readings.
JEREMIAH PALECEK - PAINTINGS
Opening reception: 3 September 2008, 7-10pm
Closing reception & Performance: 26 September 2008, 7-10 pm
STYX project space
Old Brewery Friedrichshöhe (2nd floor)
Landsberger Allee 54
10249 Berlin