Vernissage: 09.10.2010, 7pm

Date: 09.10.- 06.11.2010

Info:

Art is not a solution – art is an experiment. According to this credo, the urban artist Emess has been realising a wide variety of works in public space for almost a decade. Whereas up to now Emess has been exclusively concerned with creating formally adequate solutions for works in certain places and current themes, the Berlin activist is now breaking away from his own motto for the first time.

Contrary to his habit of withholding solutions and merely suggesting new ways of thinking, Emess unexpectedly breaks with his silence and in his new exhibition “ART IS THE SOLUTION” finally reveals to us the solutions to the great problems of our time that have been withheld for so long. Whether it’s overpopulation, economic crisis, war or urban dreariness – Emess has a suitable artistic solution ready for every evil. For example, his 12-part series of stencil works in combination with free painting awakens our impulse to buy things we really urgently need – like peace, love or time.

A new series of works deals with the subject of acoustics in public space. Over the past few months, Emess has installed wind-powered sound installations at various locations in Berlin and documented them in a film. Autonomous from an additional energy source, these installations use only the wind and the aerodynamic conditions of the urban space and at the same time play selected places with a suitable soundtrack. With the resonating body of a birdhouse, which simultaneously protects and camouflages these works, “Doctor Zhivago” can be heard in certain wind conditions, for example in Karl-Marx-Allee, or “Hava Nagila” at the Jewish Museum.

Emess counters the visual dictatorship of the rectangular-straight with an element that could not be more ephemeral and creates places with their own atmosphere by releasing the places from their audioel tristesse.