BENTEN CLAY | The Surface of Displacement

Opening: Friday, 7 September 2012, 7 p.m.

Exhibition: 8 September - 6. October 2012

Open Weekend: 15./16. September 2012, 11 - 7 p.m. 
Finissage: Saturday, 6 October 2012, 5 p.m.
Second Location: Rahmensalon, Gartenstr. 113, Mo - Fr 2 - 7 p.m.

 

We are pleased to invite you to the first solo exhibition of BENTEN CLAY, the artist collaboration of Vera Hofmann and Sabine Schründer, at Galerie Loris. The focus of the work lies on the production of a long-term project titled Age of an End in which the appearance of the now is analyzed, assessing the limitation of natural resources, their implementations, as well as mechanisms of power and volatility inherent to the human pursuit of control. 

The object THE SURFACE OF DISPLACEMENT, specifically designed and produced for the Loris gallery in Berlin, refers to the Icelandic Kárahnjúkar dam—a major construction project for energy production finished in 2006. The object is an architectural transcription of official aerial photographs. In them, the formerly vivid blue glacier rivers are depicted as they exist today: as a melted monochrome surface, or muddy lake. 

By wedging a heavy module into the gallery space—relating in form and content to the lake—, BENTEN CLAY invites aspects of displacement to be experienced. The object stands then as a massive over-dimensional immovable object forced stiff into the predetermined space. Entering and perambulating becomes limited, actionability is reduced to a minimum and the habitual use of the room is disturbed. 

With this object BENTEN CLAY combines perceptual criteria on surface, space, sculpture and materiality with thoughts concerning the impact of controversial economic and ecological decisions. Questions regarding topography, measurement and territorial shifts arise. 

In the adjacent Rahmensalon (Gartenstraße 113), BENTEN CLAY presents the work FLYING FALLS, a series of video sequences filmed in Iceland during the winter of 2012. The videos portray the sublime and frail nature of the Icelandic landscape. Through seemingly endless steady shots, the camera grasps pure nature in constant change alongside man-made traces of energy exhaustion that demarcate terrains of un-graspability, silence and uncontrollability.