NA HRANE / AT THE LIMIT / AM LIMIT

Kunsthalle Bratislava presents an international exhibition project Na hrane / At the Limit / Am Limit that explores borders and experiences associated with borderline situations through the background of works by sixteen authors from six countries.

 

Presented artists:
Silvia Beck (DE), Francisco Klinger Carvalho (BR), Chan Sook Choi (KOR), Nadine Fecht (DE), Pavel Forman (CZ), Martin Juef (DE), Martin Kocourek (CZ), Zorka Lednárová (SK), Luciana Magno (BR), Matthias Mayer (DE), Falk Nordmann (DE), Armando Queiroz (BR), Monika Rechsteiner (CH), Nina E. Schönefeld (DE), Bignia Wehrli (CH), Markus Wirthmann (DE)

 

The curators of the exhibition, Martin Juef and Zorka Lednárová, through the selection of artworks, the curators of the exhibition refer either to personal boundary experiences or to transgressive conditions created on the basis of certain artistic strategies or approaches. Borders mark an inside and an outside, they are form building contours for existential facts. Borders are dynamic and therefore never final, only death constitutes an ultimate border.

 

Bignia Wehrli: Sternenschrift (Star Writing), 2014, 5-part picture series, pigment print, photo: archive of the artist

 

The spectrum of the exhibition contributions at Kunsthalle Bratislave ranges from a space-filling reconstruction of an experienced moment of dying to a chemical experiment, on which the progressive crystalline encrustation of a salt solution can be observed. A video contribution projects today's ecological and geopolitical facts into a virtual future scenario, and we see portrait photos inserted into containers and dissolving in water, which are part of a research project on the expulsion of and discrimination against Japanese women in Korea after World War II. We also encounter a gender-specific stereotype from the early days of psychoanalysis.

 

The construction of metal grids represents a change of perspective between inside and outside.
We follow a camera as it travels through the concrete ruins of a nuclear power plant that never went into operation, and we get to know the art figure "Viola Kamp", an agent and doppelganger, who we watch as she plays out her subtle game of artistic self-dramatization. Elsewhere we are confronted with a convolute of colored drawings, whose individual sheets are reflected in pairs at the side edges, in which the depicted motifs create abstract patterns.

 

We meet the legendary king Midas, who eats living beetles before our eyes. And photographs set
in light boxes give us an insight into a conspiratorial Candomblé rite in which dancers in a trance place their bodies at the disposal of the spirits of their gods. Expressive oil paintings celebrate
the fusion of man and animal, and in the lush vegetation of a tropical rainforest a female nude is transformed into a plant being. Finally, the fragment of a rocket reminds us of the space travel pioneers, who made us dream of journeys to distant galaxies.

 

"Border experiences and overcoming borders can also be perceived as cultural techniques that fundamentally change and shape social reflections in times of turning point." says Zorka Lednárová.

 

Markus Wirthmann: Tracht & Habitus – Salt Lake, 2011, processual installation, photo: Orangerie Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin

 

The international exhibition project Na hrane / At the Limit / Am Limit was originally developed for the Museu da UFPA (Museu da Universidade Federal do Pará) in Belém, Brazil, where it was realized in 2017. For Kunsthalle Bratislava, the exhibition concept was revised and a new compilation of artistic contributions was added.

 

 

Curator and author of the conception: Martin Juef
Curatorial cooperation: Zorka Lednárová
Duration of the Exhibition: 5. 8. – 30. 10. 2020