The Last 10 Shots / Polaroid Group Show

 

The Last Ten Shots (curated by Bongout & Thibaut de Ruyter) Opening Wednesday May 21st at 7PM From May 21st till June 28th 2008 Artist List: Richard Kern (USA) Asia Argento (I) Mélanie Bonajo (NL) Thomas Bruns (G) Rabea Eipperle (G) Heike Gallmeier (G) G.R.A.M (A) Annika von Hausswolff (S) Jason Forrest (USA) Jürgen Grosse (G) Harmony Korine (USA) Les Krims (USA) Natacha Merritt (USA) Gaspar Noe (F) Danny Sangra (UK) Amano Daikichi (JP) Jean-Luc Verna (F) Eileen Wunderlich (G) Miron Zownir (G) Damien Deroubaix (F) Bruno S (G) Michael J Demeo (USA) Adam Johnson (USA) Anna Hellsgard (S) Meeloo Gfeller (F) Stephen O’Malley (USA) Zoe Thorne (G)   The Last Ten Shots (curated by Bongout & Thibaut de Ruyter) The American company Polaroid recently announced its decision to stop the production of its famous instant cameras and films. We are all familiar with the unique noise (gzzzzzzzklok), the waiting time and the joy of seeing — as if by magic — an image appearing on the instantly identifiable format: 7,7 x 7,7 cm. More often than not blurred, the subject partially or wholly out of shot, too bright or underexposed… disappointement was often as big a part of the game as anything else. The advent of the digital camera era has rendered this adventure obsolete. Sooner or later, the Polaroid will become ‘history’, an highly collectible and instantly recognizable relic from the analog times. Without nostalgia, we have provided 28 artists with a 600 cartridge containing 10 colour shots and asked them to shoot their last ever Polaroids. An architectural photographer, a pornographic one, a conceptual artist, a specialist in self portraits, a painter, and so forth. All were given the same deal: “Here’s the film, just give us the results! Even if only one photo satisfies you. Even if it’s blurred. Even if it just looks like a Polaroid…” Bongout Showroom Torstraße 110 10119 Berlin Germany Opening hours: Tue-Sa, 12 – 07 PM +49(0)30 280 93 758 Polaroid by Asia Argento / © Bongout Showroom Polaroid by Les Krims / © Bongout Showroom Polaroid by Natacha Merritt / © Bongout Showroom Click to Download PR

 

 

Bongout Showroom – Berlin

Bongout Showroom
In February 2008, after more than twelve years spent
working in different European cities and four years of
running a silkscreen workshop in Berlin-Friedrichshain,
Meeloo Gfeller and Anna Hellsgård will inaugurate a
new gallery showroom on 110 Torstrasse. Over the
years, Bongout has produced a significant number of
concert posters, record sleeves and limited-edition artists’
books. Gfeller and Hellsgård are also the editors
of Mollusk magazine (5 issues so far) and regularly collaborate
with contemporary artists on silkscreen prints
and publications (Damien Deroubaix, Antoine Bernhart,
Costes, Reinhard Scheibner, Claudia Aldering a.o.). They
navigate between genres, expectations, techniques, and
media, always emphasizing graphic power and ideologi
cal impact.
Accordingly, their showroom in Berlin-Mitte is a place
where contemporary art will meet graphic, chance and
underground art as well as numerous forms of sound
and visual cultures. In short, a showcase for both
Bongout’s productions and the artists with whom
Gfeller and Hellsgard have been collaborating in their
studio or whom they have published in Mollusk
(Blanquet, Charles Krafft, Les Krims etc.), as well as for
their future discoveries. Extending far beyond the confines
of contemporary art, the joint influences of
Meeloo Gfeller and Anna Hellsgård should account for
a space that sets out to build bridges but also to surprise
and provoke audiences!

Bongout Showroom
Torstraße 110, 10119 Berlin, Germany
Opening hours: Tu-Sa, 12 – 07 PM

www.bongout.org
+49(0)30 280 93 758

Exhibition: Laurent Impeduglia

Exhibition: April 11th – May 17th, 2008.

Laurent Impeduglia (Belgium, 1974) is a hyperactive builder. His
artworks range from funny drawings on paper, through wild oil on canvas
works, to tiny sculptures and huge installations: the thread that links them
is the artist’s obsessive, compulsive relationship with the act of
construction and arrangement. Bricks, working tools (overalls, stones,
concrete mixers, wheelbarrows, and so forth) are used – either the real
objects themselves, slightly transformed, or simply drawn on paper or
painted – to build cheap castles, burning churches or collapsing igloos.
Impeduglia presents to us a world where a DIY philosophy is as
important as the final production; a world where works “in progress” are
as or more significant than finished objects. A world in which not only
the object in question but the artist/builder’s life itself is being
constructed.
Humour is also very present in Impeduglia’s work. He stages himself as
the happy worker, at times writing droll slogans that could almost
function as proverbs (“Where are you jesus” – with no question mark!), at
times presenting us with objects which invite us to travel but which
appear so precarious, so treaxcherous, that we would never dare use
them. Witness his unsettling wooden raft that simply proclaims “Quitter
Liège” on its proudly floating black flag, wherever it stands. Everything
here is about moving, traveling, drifting, finding a path. In the artist’s
own words, as daubed on a number of canvases: “Make a wish, build
your life”.
For his first show in Berlin, Impeduglia is exhibiting a large selection of
new works in the gallery-showroom Bongout, as if freshly made in his
huge studio. The word VITRIOL has recently become an important topic
for Impeduglia, accompanying his moving from the point of constructing
objects to the idea of reconstructing yourself. VITRIOL – the keyword of
this show that, rather than a classic hanging, will manifest itself as
translation of the artist’s everyday world, his atelier in Belgium, as big
and messy and crowded and chaotic as any building “under
construction”. As the process of making itself. Between objects, papers
and canvases, between ready-mades, comic-book drawings and savage
paintings, his – and your – building site is on the way.

Bongout Showroom
Torstrasse 110
10119 Berlin – Germany
Tu-Sa 12-7 pm
www.bongout.org