Koordinaten des Körpers

With works by Monika Gabriel Dorniak | Ieva Jansone | Marc Klee | Christian Mayrock | Wakilur Rahman

Opening: Friday, September 23, 2011, 7:30 PM Exhibition duration: September 24 to October 23, 2011
Closing event with artist talk: Sunday, October 23, 2011, 7:30 PM

kunstraum t27, the exhibition space of Kunstverein Neukölln e.V., presents an interdisciplinary exhibition project on the theme of body image / body perception. This exhibition features five positions in contemporary art, complemented by an extensive accompanying program that examines the scientific perspective on the human (naked) body.

The artists primarily utilize photographic reproduction of the body. All works share an objectifying gaze on nudity. However, this gaze is dissecting, revealing the societal conditions surrounding nudity and exploring the tension between ideal beauty and deviations from the norm.

Latvian artist Ieva Jansone, who lives in Berlin, contributes Polaroid photographs. In a collection of undeveloped films she acquired, a printed coordinate system was provided. Using this material, she photographed details of naked individuals, which appear to be scientifically cataloged. The arrangement into a multipart, seemingly self-gridded tableau resembles an atlas of human body forms while simultaneously presenting an abstract form.

Marc Klee showcases portraits of unclothed individuals captured in a dark room. For the photographs, lasers were used as the only light source, creating a vertical and horizontal grid over the body. The resulting images, which appear very abstract, reveal the volumes of the bodies through the distortion of the otherwise precisely aligned light strips.

Christian Mayrock presents the work: The Body of the Anatomist. At the center of an installation that changes repeatedly within the exhibition context are images of a reclining figure. Captured with a large-format camera under precisely documentary conditions, the reclining figure appears lifeless, exposed to the objective gaze without protection. Photographed from all sides, the images are distributed across wooden panels, allowing the six side walls to be imagined as forming a box.

Monika Gabriela Dorniak presents a collection of images she has gathered from social networks. She raises questions about the function of photographs that depict wounds, injuries, or the body itself (ranging from anorexic to bizarre manifestations). An accompanying text-image documentation compiles and comments on the connections of such an autobiographically motivated body exhibition.

Wakilur Rahman, born in Bangladesh, addresses the ideal body by referencing the proportion theories of the Renaissance. Through the measurement of thousands of people, both Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci developed a body ideal. In a study that incorporates real individuals into Leonardo's projected drawing "The Vitruvian Man," it becomes evident that this ideal is rarely attainable by any single person. The societal pressure many face to conform to a beauty standard is also called into question.

The accompanying program includes scientific lectures from various disciplines (archaeology, anatomy, art history) that complement the artistic positions, which will be discussed in an additional artist talk. The fields of performance and experimental film, which engage intensively with the body, will also be represented by several positions.

For current accompanying events: www.kunstraumt27.de.