Group exhibition, No Need to Hunt – We Just Wait for the Roadkill curated by Paul Barsch brought together the work of eight artists at Dresden’s S T O R E from September 26 to October 10, 2015. Inanimate sculptures and objects sit quietly in conversation with one another; their potential power as vehicles of speech feels fragile and self aware. The accompanying text, and this segment in particular, is integral to the reading of the exhibition:
/fresh meat with zero exhaustion/ is not exactly true, at least it shouldn’t be. Immaterial labour is real labour and going beyond just looking and repeating requires precision and focus. Laid back is fine, but remember, I scroll too and I can see if you’ve been lazy; in fact, I want to see you exhausted.
But in the back of our minds, always: how fresh is this roadkill anyway?
The show’s installation photos capture Kai Hügel‘s ‘Iced Herbs’ as they begin to thaw. LED lights and various vietnamese herbs emerge from within the frozen casing. A light leak begins to permeate the floor, moistening Dorota Gaweda & Eglé Kulbokaité‘s deteriorating aubergine skins. Dotted at random around the room and dissected in half, the vegetables lay splayed out over a hashtag text piece stuck to the floor that reads “CaptiveCEOsToBeReturnedToTheWild”. Michele Gabriele‘s ‘SHITTY-SLIPPY-SLUTTY (A beautiful and dangerous night)’, sits firmly in relation to the rest of the light and somewhat ephemeral works. The crystallised body sits somewhere between a rock formation you might see in a cave and an oversized piece of quartz used for spiritual healing. The pigment mixes with the surrounding moisture, dying the floor blue and purple. Protruding from the side, a PREDATOR knife sticks out from the sculpture’s gut.
Similar in size and shape, Burkhard Beschow‘s ‘Holes’ feels skeletal in relation. Wire, metal parts and cloth are tangled in a violent mess. The letter ‘E’, among other unidentifiable pieces of debris, is suspended in some sort of barbed wire trapping. Jake Kent‘s ‘Dropping the A Bomb’ and ‘Hanging out in someone else’s puddle’ pile political slogans in a heap on the floor. Silk screen patches yelling “DESTROY EVERYTHING” and “KILL YOUR INNER COP” are sewn into the digital prints and silk viscose velvet. The handmade tassels have a tender quality, bringing to mind the lengthy and invested form of obscure labour within activism. Alexander Endrullat‘s ‘Unibody’ places a MacBook on a step and in safe distance from the damp floor. Plugged in and fully charged, it has been permanently welded shut and rendered a completely useless object.
On the other side of the room, a printed text winds around a roll of toilet paper by Camilla Steinum. With some difficulty, bits and pieces can be read: “Dirt comes out via the mouth…again and again unprocessed and embarrassing…trying to find meaning…the words, worlds.” The print feels strongly connected to the accompanying text, stringing the exhibition together by a thread of poetic-manifesto styled musings.**
Exhibition photos, top right.
