Wentrup

Hicham Berrada / Felix Kiessling

28 Oct - 20 Dec 2014

© Hicham Berrada / Felix Kiessling
© Felix Kiessling
Rückführung, 2014
detail
HICHAM BERRADA / FELIX KIESSLING
Equilibres / Ausgleich
28 October– 21 November 2014

curated by Alya Sebti

This exhibition is an ode to the poetry of our everyday lives, an invitation to go back to the substance. A moment of pause, to focus on our senses, and let our brain slow down and stop focusing on discourses and extra ordinary events so that we can finally observe what we are all made of, what we all have in common and share, but never take the time notice in the permanent race we are trapped in.

Coming back to the sense: the sight and the act of looking. The spectator as a witness of the magic revealed thanks to performances of the two artists: Felix Kiessling and Hicham Berrada.

By constantly combining new relationship between water and the elementary particles necessary to the emergence of life, heat, and movement, these two alchemists expose the magic of what we are made of. From these fragile relationship emanates the reaction of millions of particles, provoking new tensions which themselves create illusions of equilibrium.

Thanks to these floating equilibrium the spectator is not only facing a representation of nature, it is the nature itself which is present. Nature in its most extended element: water, brought to light by a minimal intervention on our perceptions by simple arrangements and changes in scale.

We are witnessing a new translation of the painting’s elementary: where the white canvas is actually the reality itself. The painterly materials are thee physical elements, activated to create a new illusion of equilibrium in motion. The substance becomes an actor due to the dialogue between the elementary particles: ingredients of these alchemists, cooks, painters and poets of our daily lives.

The spectator has observed, but what does he actually see?

These meta-images universal landscapes are in the same time individual visual experience where everyone reads his own translation. «What your head is full of is what you will see»: The eye of the spectator is guided towards the manifestation of what we all have in common, but afterwards it is his or her own imagination which screens this experience.

Every reading is unique: our brain stretches out to catch these constantly moving equilibrium and then recreate itself new relationships, new creative tensions, and then again new floating equilibrium. By doing so, Hicham Berrada and Felix Kiessling manage to reveal a poem about what we all share, but which reading is always unique.

Hicham Berrada was born in 1986 in Casablanca, he lives and works in Paris. His work oscillates permanently between science and poetry. He recently exhibited at Palais de Tokyo and is represented by Kamel Mennour gallery. Among others, he holds a Prix Schneider in the category installation and from l’Académie de France à Rome, has participated in many exhibitions, amongst them: Nuit blanche, Paris (2014), Mac/Val (2014), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013), PS1, New York (2011).

Felix Kiessling was born in 1980 in Hamburg, he lives and works in Berlin. His approach considers the space around him like a neutral material, without measure or form with which he experiments in permanence, translating his permanent feeling of being on a planetary sphere without a scale.

Felix Kiessling studied at at Institut für Raumexperimente in cooperation with Universität der Künste (UdK). He has participated in many international individual as well as collective exhibitions, including Alexander Levy, Berlin (2014), Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, (2014), Vitamin Space, Guangzhou, China (2014), D.A.Z. (Deutsches Architektur Zentrum) (2013), Berlin, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2013), Addis Foto Fest (2012), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2011), Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland (2011).

Furthermore Felix Kiessling’s works were shown at Marrakech biennial, Morocco (2012), and Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), Japan (2011).

The “Equilibres/Ausgleich” exhibition is the very first encounter between Hicham and Felix, their unique dialogue about floating equilibrium reveals the poetry of our everyday life
 

Tags: Hicham Berrada