Opening:
September 14th, 6pm
Reception:
September 17th, 6pm
Dates:
September 15th - 24th
daily from 11am - 9.30pm
Exuberance is beauty.
— William Blake
The Sensation of Biting Into a Peach And Letting The Juice Run Down Your Chin takes its title from a book by Timothy Morton and is inspired by Georges Bataille’s general economy and the excess of energy that translates into the effervescence of life. We envisioned an interpretation of works that could resonate against each other while dealing intensely with formal and historical challenges, either through witty and direct suggestions or by establishing complex universes of language and thought. Therefore, we—artists and the curatorial team—aspire to divest ourselves of using and abusing a concept to arouse aesthetic ways of understanding what can be called the human condition.
Curated by ENTKUNSTUNG and supported by DOCK11, the show is about energy, and therefore, about pleasure, taboos and excess. When we think of hedonism, we immediately create an image of the happy life of industrialised societies where the quality of life is related to the consumption of goods and services and with easy access to leisure and fun. Nevertheless, we also want to refer to excess in other facets of human behaviour and natural forms in this exhibition. We can see excess applied in war: the force that destroys everything in its path; in our economic system that is also based on excess—on generating a surplus to allow consumption and accumulation—masked by fetishism; and in nature. Nature is the irrefutable example of excessive energy use; it is capable of both creation—as seen in colours, textures, shapes and life forms inhabiting the planet—and destruction. Nothing else in this world represents better excess than the procreation and reproduction of the species. Human passions are also excess in their natural essence; however, they are contained and sublimated energy used either to create culture or a form of aggression repressed by social norms.
Eroticism, excess and praxis not subjugated by a concept is the touch of the soft velvet and the nectar running through the chin of this collection of artworks. The simple act of biting a soft and juicy skin reminds us of how much the senses—and passions of the soul—have been repressed. It is not that we lose our conscience, no. We enjoy it because we find pleasure in nature and objects. The nature of pleasure is not to be contained, so is this show.
We need the tonic of wildness.
— Henry D. Thoreau
Curated by ENTKUNSTUNG entkunstung.com & Herwig Scherabon
Artists:
Chris Bierl
Joseph Haxan
Christian Holze
Sophia Kahn
Anna Nezhnaya
Tanja Saban & Herwig Scherabon
Protey Temen
Rustcakes
Handsome Objects
The exhibition was supported in its technical supervision and realization by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media in the NEUSTART KULTUR program and the KULTUR.GEMEINSCHAFTEN funding program of the Kulturstiftung der Länder.
