Past Residents
Past Resident2016: KdFS Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen
Franz Jyrch
In Franz Jyrch’s installations and sculptural settings, canvases and stretcher frames play a significant role. The basic approach to her work, which is characterized by coincidence and calculation alike, consists of arranging and deconstructing very diverse materials taken from artistic contexts and everyday life as well. Thereby, she creates complex sculptures and installations which can fill entire rooms. It leaves us with the impression that painting has emancipated itself from its central coordinates, with its ‘assistants’ conquering new spaces beyond the narrow square of the frame. Instead, the exhibit space now provides the actual framework for a much more complex pictorial narrative, one that integrates many things that are outside of the art context. (Text by Ralf F. Hartmann)
Franz Jyrch graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig in 2012. She received the Marion Ermer Award and completed her postgraduate studies in 2014. Solo shows include BONHEUR, Vincenz Sala, Paris; PARAVENT, Galerie EIGEN+ART Leipzig; KNICKE AND ORDER, Gallery of the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig; and La Pittura, Vincenz Sala, Berlin. Recent group shows include Plain Walls, White Teeth, Galerie Genscher, Hamburg; Yearzero, Kollektiv Unkonventionelle Kunst, Zurich; Mulhouse 015, Biennale d‘Art Contemporain, Mulhouse; WERKSCHAU, Spinnerei Galleries, Leipzig; A Room of One’s Own, Kunstverein Tiergarten, Berlin; and Sammlungsalphabet, Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig.
Franz Jyrch, o.t., 2014, Acrylic on stretchers, 16 1/2 x 24 x 7 in. Courtesy of the artist.
Past Resident2015: La Fondation pour l'Art Contemporain Claudine et Jean-Marc Salomon
Julie Béna
Julie Béna’s work explores the threshold between one perception and another; between being a team player or a spoilsport; participation or abstinence. Béna refers to the exhibition space as her “playground,” which she populates with performers, singers, sculptures, photos, videos and installations. Early in life, Béna acted in a roving theatrical troupe in France. In the past few years, the transient and artificial staging of play resurfaced in her practice, alongside prominent use of text.
Julie Béna (born 1982, Pantin, France) currently works in New York City. Her past solo exhibitions include: Nail Tang, Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris, France, 2015; Destiny, Galerie Edouard Manet, Gennevilliers, Paris, 2015; T&T consortium: You’re Already Elsewhere, The French Institute Alliance Française, New York, 2014. Her selected collective exhibitions and screenings include: Camera of Wonders, Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, Mexico, 2015; Artists’ Film Club: Breaking Joints: Part 2, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 2015; RIDEAUX / blinds, Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, France, 2015; Late capitalism, it’s like, almost over, The Luminary, St Louis, Missouri, 2014; Things, Design Cloud, Chicago, 2014; Graphic Design, Prague, 2014; La Méthode Jacobson, Nouvelles Vagues, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2013. She exhibited performance projects at Fahrenheit, Los Angeles, 2014; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2014; PERFORMA 13, New York, 2013; La Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris, France, 2012 and Fonderie Darling, Montréal, Canada, 2011. Béna studied at the Villa Arson in Nice, France and attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. From 2012 to 2013 she was part of Le Pavillon, the research laboratory of Le Palais de Tokyo.
Julie Béna, Les Nuits de la pleine lune, 2014, Print on fabric and blinds structure, Size variable. Courtesy of the artist.
Past Resident2016: Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin
Aleksander Komarov
Much of Aleksander Komarov’s film work are edited as essays concerning the economic, political, and social conditions that have enabled his nomadic lifestyle- a hallmark of globalized artist-hood. Through film Komarov explores the recording and production of imagery as a political activity, were images therefore appear as co-producers of social conditions. In each work, the spectator is situated within a timeline, on the premise of deconstructing a conclusive documentary statement and instead offering up multiple possible routes towards meaning. As a person entangled in multiple political systems, he exposes the contemporary identity politics as a regulation mechanism of post-industrial exploitation and question whether the art itself now takes over the old assignment of rationalization and standardization.
Aleksander Komarov was born and raised in Belarus, trained as an artist in Glebov Art Leceum in Minsk, Belarus; the University of Fine Arts Poznan, Poland; and Rijksakademie, The Netherlands. He published filmic and written essays concerning questions of migrating identity’s, (cultural) globalization, the condition of contemporary art and its relation to broader economic contexts. His films include Estate (2008); Capital (2009), Glosy/Voices (2011), Palipaduazennje (2012), Language Lessons (2013). Komarov is also co-founder of Air Berlin Alexanderplatz, a research-related residency program in Berlin. His films were exhibited most recently at the Moscow Biennial (2015); Arsenal Gallery, Poland (2014) and The Way of the Shovel, curated by Dieter Roelstraete at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2013.
Events & Exhibitions
Salon: Tony Albert and Aleksander Komarov
November 24, 2015
Aleksander Komarov, Estate, 2010, Book. Courtesy of the artist and Torpedo Press.