Kappatos gallery, Athens 2008

Dwellings of a suspended Empire

First soloshow of Kai Schhiemenz in Kappatos gallery (in Athens; 12 Athinas St, Monastiraki, tel 210-321-7931).
The centralpiece of the exhibition, goes back an idea developed for Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum for the exhibition ‘Speculation’, as a walk-on sculpture. The sculpture was build as a model and painted in the way, like the US Navy painted there ships during the Second World War with a ‘dazzle camouflage’. Inside was projected a film about a Dance-piece a Solo choreography of Peter Player, projected as a dobble-side-projection. The solo is filmed with two fixed cameras. They are fixed in such way, that they don’t face each other and they can’t record the whole set-up at once. They work like engines without moving. Both cameras create a two lens corridor a and b. The choreography on the other hand takes up the whole space. For each camera it means that the dancer is sometimes seen in the corridor of camera a , sometimes in the corridor of the camera b and sometimes in both (a+b). The sculpture creates a situation between using and observation.

photos Kai Schiemenz, 'Dwellings of a suspended Empire'

filmstill with Peter Player

modells exhibited in the gallery

links: http://www.kaput.gr/01/page15EN.htm
http://www.mixtape.gr/t.asp?sec=4&sub=1&uid=81
http://www.cineek.gr/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2285

Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum, 2008

The Empty Dwelling, the Vain Tower and the Mad Colonist, 2008




Skulpturenpark Berlin_Zentrum sits on 62 vacant lots of downtown real estate owned by various private companies and individuals. It is an urban void which was formerly part of the "Mauerstreifen," the militarized zone within the Berlin Wall, but is now overgrown with weeds. The land remains vacant to this day. With approximately 5 hectares of open lots, it offers a vast space and unique history to host various socio-cultural activities.
Kai Schiemenz's spiraling architectonic sculpture consists of 3-parts, a staircase, a smal enclosed platform and tower. The structure rises up from the park’s lone hill, a mound of building foundations from before the Wall. If the sculpture truly has historical foundations, it appears like a blown-up scale-model of a collision between Constructivist forms and more recent Post-Structuralist mega-buildings where “form follows function” does not always preside. Its plywood and lattice structure rises intuitively from the ground. Viewers can ascend its stairs and into the empty platform. Similar to the artist's past work, the tower operates as both a monument standing alone in the park’s vast field and as a pavilion from which to view. It provides the practical purpose of seeing and of being seen. However, its form also suggests a utopian architecture which placed on the historical site of the former Berlin Wall defiantly takes a last stand before its surrounding area is at last absolved and run over by urban renewal. http://www.skulpturenpark.org/

photo from http://www.skulpturenpark.org/

photo from http://www.skulpturenpark.org/

after winter storm Erika

picture from http://www.skulpturenpark.org/

movie under http://www.architekturclips.de/holzturmend/holzturm.html

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/zeitung/Ticket;art2811,2488453
February 2, 2008. TAZ, Berlin. "Aus der Spirale heraus mit Blick f¸r das Bereichernde," by MJ. p. 25