Adrien Missika

Stoneroses @ Minibar, Jul 23 + 24

20 July 2016

Mirak Jamal and Santiago Taccetti are presenting a fourth iteration of the Stoneroses group exhibition at Stockholm’s Minibar on July 23 and 24.

The duo present works by Gianluca Concialdi, Chelsea Culprit, Candice JacobsLaurie KangIvan KrassoievitchErika LandströmAdrien Missika, George Rippon, and Gabriel Säll. Using public off-site locations —including Berlin’s Grunewald in 2014 reviewed here by aqnb —as a space for their works, two guided tours of the exhibition are being offered starting at Vårberg Station, each lasting about two hours.

The location of the works is described as an area “scouted for its features of equal parts composited and of un-composited concrete” with various nooks to be inhabited by “leaking materials”. The area sits nearby the highest natural point in Stockholm, “an artificial high built from the excavation spoils of the Stockholm Metro”.

A series of posters will line the walls of Minibar as placeholders with the intention of eventually being filled with remnants from the guided tour. Though the gallery “encapsulates a set of norms”, for this event it will attempt to find a sense of balance by adopting the outdoors as an exhibition space and emphasizing the gestures it implies. The gallery becomes “a placeholder for a map indicating gestures being activated at a different location”.

See the FB event page for more details.**

Stoneroses @ Minibar Jul 23-24

Mirak Jamal and Santiago Taccetti, ‘Stoneroses #2’ (2015). Courtesy the artists.

  share news item

unexpected others @ L’Atelier-ksr, May 20 – Jul 16

19 May 2016

The unexpected others group exhibition is on at Berlin’s  L’Atelier-ksr, opening May 20 and running to July 16.

Featuring Adam Fearon, Vanessa Safavi, Richard Frater, Renata Har and Clémence de La Tour du Pin among others, the exhibition follows last year’s Blue Majik, which aqnb reviewed here as the second iteration a project series exploring  “the ongoing dissolution between the biologic and the synthetic.”

This time, unexpected others reflects on “relations existing between organic and non-living entities” by taking its title from Donna Harraway’s 1992 text ‘The Promise of Monsters‘, where the influential writer and theorist coins ‘innapropriate/d others’ while considering “how hard intellectual, cultural and political work these new geometries require”.

Other artists also taking part include Adrien MissikaViolet DennisonAntoine Renard, and Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld, along with a written contribution from Elvia Wilk.

See the L’Atelier-ksr website for details.**

Adam Fearon, p13n (2015) Exhibition view. Photo by Quentin Dubret. Courtesy Room E-10 27.
Adam Fearon, p13n (2015) Exhibition view. Photo by Quentin Dubret. Courtesy Room E-10 27, Paris.

  share news item

Adrien Missika, Zeitgeber (2015) exhibition photos

1 March 2016

Adrien Missika’s exhibition Zeitgeber, an installation of photography, assemblages and video, ran from September 18 to November 7, 2015, at Mexico City’s Proyectos Monclova. Carefully considered material choices are planted in the barren landscape of the gallery, diluting and re-translating a sincere effort to connect with time and space.

Zeitgeber is a German word for “time giver” and is used to describe internal body clocks that become synchronized with the external environment, such as air temperatures, sunrises and sunsets. Providing important background information for the context of the works, the press release acts as a framework for the personal narrative that is played out around the space.

Adrien Missika, Zeitgeber (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City.
Adrien Missika, Zeitgeber (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City.

A corridor painted beige is titled ‘Cosmic Latte’, and references the shade chosen by a group of scientists in the early 2000s as being the average colour of the universe. The bright lights that run along the ceiling accentuates the stark emptiness of the hallway, with only a small steel box placed awkwardly on its own. Covering the top, a glass sphere similar to an astronaut’s helmet encases/protects an earthy substance.

Three large photographs titled ‘Stargazer’ make up a triptych along the main wall and were taken by Missika while in a hammock looking up at the sky. Similar to an abstract painting aesthetic, the amateur style of photography gives off a romantic sensitivity. Highly pixellated, shaky and soft coloured in hue, they act as a trace or memento of a significant individual experience of searching for the moon in the night sky. Potted plants intertwined with incomplete structures are placed in the middle of the room. Mimicking the colours in the photographs, the pots are painted a light pink, blue and purple. Titled ‘Higher Future,’ they cling to thin steel columns grounded in concrete. Another version places a cactus down the middle, its vertical shape in tandem with the steel as they reach towards the sky. In contrast to these more stable monuments, a thin sheet pulled into the shape of a one-man tent shelters another potted plant. The leaves pierce through the top of the fabric.

A set of  hammocks inhabit the rest of the space, their form pulled into different directions by “carrying water, sand, Zen objects, and written records of experiences in altered states.” Sitting somewhere between fashionable aesthetics and the re-creation of a camping trip, the works position themselves both sincerely and ironically in relation to the natural phenomena of the universe.**

Adrien Missika’s Zeitgeber was on at Mexico City’s Proyectos Monclova, running September 18 to November 7, 2015.

Header image: Adrien Missika, Zeitgeber’ (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City.

  share news item