COMMA17: Bernd Behr
28 Jan - 20 Feb 2010
BERND BEHR
28 January - 20 February 2010
Bernd Behr will present a group of loosely connected works including a new large-scale video projection depicting a series of uniform white concrete housing shells set amidst mounds of dug-up earth. Shot on the construction site of a new Bauhaus-themed gated community in China the piece chronicles part of a recent New Town development designed by Albert Speer Jr. Screened in reverse, Weimar Villa (Unreconstructed) depicts an endless cycle of construction and excavation. The initial documentary nature of the video soon gives way to more ambiguous readings where distinctions between the new and ancient are suspended.
A series of sculptural works in concrete extend the archaeological motif of the video into the gallery. Leaning against the wall are a collection of individual flat panels of varying shapes and sizes. Their ambiguous forms, both hard-edged industrial and petrified organic, at once appear as both pre-cast construction components for some future, unspecified structure and archaeological relics of unknown origin.
A further set of freestanding sculptures entitled Quasicrystal Compass consist of hollow crystalline shapes in concrete precariously supported by modernist Arne Jacobsen tubular chair legs. Rough cast from timber carcassing, their formal language is informed as much by late Modern 'Brutalist' architecture as the tradition of Chinese scholars' rocks.
This new work which continues Behr's interest in places and events that have shaped narratives around the history of the built environment. By inserting itself into these narratives using both research and fiction, Behr's practice can be seen to operate a form of associative archaeology on the peripheries of architectural modernisms.
28 January - 20 February 2010
Bernd Behr will present a group of loosely connected works including a new large-scale video projection depicting a series of uniform white concrete housing shells set amidst mounds of dug-up earth. Shot on the construction site of a new Bauhaus-themed gated community in China the piece chronicles part of a recent New Town development designed by Albert Speer Jr. Screened in reverse, Weimar Villa (Unreconstructed) depicts an endless cycle of construction and excavation. The initial documentary nature of the video soon gives way to more ambiguous readings where distinctions between the new and ancient are suspended.
A series of sculptural works in concrete extend the archaeological motif of the video into the gallery. Leaning against the wall are a collection of individual flat panels of varying shapes and sizes. Their ambiguous forms, both hard-edged industrial and petrified organic, at once appear as both pre-cast construction components for some future, unspecified structure and archaeological relics of unknown origin.
A further set of freestanding sculptures entitled Quasicrystal Compass consist of hollow crystalline shapes in concrete precariously supported by modernist Arne Jacobsen tubular chair legs. Rough cast from timber carcassing, their formal language is informed as much by late Modern 'Brutalist' architecture as the tradition of Chinese scholars' rocks.
This new work which continues Behr's interest in places and events that have shaped narratives around the history of the built environment. By inserting itself into these narratives using both research and fiction, Behr's practice can be seen to operate a form of associative archaeology on the peripheries of architectural modernisms.