11 Sep 2009

Marine Hugonnier at Kunstverein Braunschweig

MARINE HUGONNIER
September 12–November 22, 2009

Marine Hugonnier (*1969 in Paris; lives in London) became known internationally with her series 'Towards Tomorrow (International Date Line Alaska)', which photographically documents the International Date Line in the Bering Strait and depicts a moment in the future: from Alaska, the artist took a photograph in the direction of Siberia, which due to its geographic position is twenty-four hours ahead of Alaska.

Landscape, viewed as aesthetic topography in its relation to history and ideology, continues to be a central theme in later works, such as, among others, the film trilogy 'Ariana' (2003), 'The Last Tour' (2004), and 'Travelling Amazonia' (2005): in 'The Last Tour'—a fictitious future scenario of the closing of part of the Alps—the camera accompanies the last flight of a hot-air balloon over the Matterhorn region. It is the reversal of the great narratives of modernity, which deal with discovery, conquest, exploitation, and cartography: the return of blank areas on the map. For 'Travelling Amazonia', Hugonnier took to the jungle in the Amazon region. The film follows the six-thousand-mile long trans-Amazonian highway that transverses the rain forest to join the coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is reminiscent of the megalomaniac pioneering spirit that manifests itself in this colonialist project of the seventies. The photographic works 'Wednesday' and 'Thursday' attempt to reproduce the discovery of Brazil by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral in the Holy Week of 1500. Hours of colonial history that are still reflected in the name 'Monte Pascoal' (in English: Mt. Easter). The Western tradition of appropriating places by means of naming them contradicts the 'anonymity' of the mountains that Hugonnier reflects in the series 'Mountain with No Name'. The photographs show nameless mountains that surround the Pandjshêr Valley in the northeast of Afghanistan and thus make reference to a history that exists alongside Western history.

'The Restauration Project' on which Hugonnier has been working since 2006, deals with landscapes of another kind. It investigates the restoration of old landscape paintings as an endeavor to connect two moments in time: the production of a work of art and its reception.

After exhibitions at S.M.A.K. Ghent (2007), at the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain in Geneva (2007), at the Kunsthalle Bern (2007) oder Malmö Kunsthall (2009) this is the first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. A comprehensive catalogue will be published in December 2009 by JRP Ringier in collaboration with the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne and the Malmö Konsthall. It will include text contributions by Martin Herbert, Christian Rattemeyer, et al., and will be edited and include an introduction by Florence Derieux and Hilke Wagner.


Simultaneously at the Kunstverein's REMISE:

MIRKO MARTIN. MARGINAL STORIES
September 12–November 22, 2009

The Berlin-based artist Mirko Martin (*1976) used his camera to trace the ambivalences of urban life on the bustling streets of downtown Los Angeles and among the famous backdrops of Hollywood. All of the works depict an entanglement of documentation and fiction. In the photoseries L.A. Crash (2006–09), Martin focuses from a variety of perspectives on public life as well as arranged locations: car accidents, arrests, burning high-rise buildings, and street photographs that present people and momentary encounters. The images appear to originate from a cinematographic memory, and when viewing them they evoke ambiguous narrative threads.

In the video 'Noir' (2008), the screen remains black; it is the sound level alone as well as its central visualization as subtitles that evoke subjective images. One hears the noise being made by helicopters and police sirens from the off. The dialogue ignites an action-packed plot in the viewer's mind. Accompanying the show catalogue will be published with text contributions by Hilke Wagner, Sarah Frost, and Katrin Meder.