Jonathan Monaghan, Hanakam & Schuller, Thomas Draschan & Trond Ansten

SHAPESHIFTERS

SCREENING

18 May 2018

CURATED by CLEMENS WILHELM

SHAPESHIFTERS brings together a selection of videos and films which focus on the blurry moment when your mind creates meaning and labels by putting something you encounter into a category. But some objects or people seem to linger on a narrow ridge, shifting their position to the left or the right of this ridge, changing every time you look at them. They seem impossible to judge or characterize, and somehow to almost magically embody both of their opposites. This creates a fascinating obstacle for reason, but perhaps shows more truly the state of all things in the world:

Doesn’t everything carry at least an element of its complete opposite in itself? Therefore shouldn’t all things be able to shift to their opposites, and to indefinitely oscillate between two opposite meanings? The shapeshifter is reflecting the indecisiveness of the brain, the struggle to put something into binary categories such as on/off, yes/no, or black/white. The artists in this program make good use of tricky shapeshifters in their films, each in a very unique and individual way.

PROGRAM

Jonathan Monaghan | ESCAPE POD | 17 min

Hanakam & Schuller | HOUSING & HEALING | 7 min

Thomas Draschan | METROPOLEN DES LEICHTSINNS | 10 min

Trond Ansten | 17 TONES OF WHITE | 27 min

ARTISTS:

Jonathan Monaghan (*1986 New York) works across a range of media, including prints, sculpture and animated video, to produce otherworldly objects and narratives. Drawing on wide-ranging sources, such as historical artworks and science fiction, his works seem to elicit subconscious anxieties associated with technology and consumerism. Past exhibitions and screenings of his work include The Sundance Film Festival, The Walters Museum of Art, and The Frist Center for the Visual Arts. His work has been featured in several media outlets including The Washington Post, VICE, The Wall Street Journal and The Village Voice. Monaghan is represented by bitforms gallery in New York and Galerie 22,48m2 in Paris.

Markus Hanakam (*1979 in Essen, Germany) and Roswitha Schuller (*1984 in Friesach, Austria) live and work in Vienna. Since 2004 collaborative work as a duo, exhibitions and festival participations, as well as curatorial activity in an international context. Presentation of their work, among others, in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, New York, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moskau, MAK Museum für Angewandte Kunst / Gegenwartskunst, Wien, MAK Center Los Angeles, and Japan National Art Center, Tokyo.

Thomas Draschan (*1967 Linz) is an artist based in Vienna, Berlin and Frankfurt who works with film, video and found materials. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Städelschule Frankfurt (Meisterschüler 1998).
He received the Seelenbinder Art Award Berlin (2018), the Takehashi Prize Tokyo (2017), the S. Jünemann Prize Video, the Prix Vitesse (2015), the Award for Best Cinematographic Language in Recine/Brasil (2006), Best Film at No Budget Festival Hamburg (2005), the Hessian Film Awards (2001 & 2003), and the Ann Arbour Excellence in Film Editing Award (2002).

Trond Ansten (*1984 Bamble) is a visual artist and biologist based in Tromsø. With a strong passion for hunting, fishing and harvesting, his focus is on the relation between man and nature. Ansten creates films in a performative language that is built of sculptural compositions in the landscape. His works are shown internationally in various exhibitions and video art festivals, such as 6010 International Film and Videofestival Hilchenbach-Dahlbruch (D), Anthropozänta Helmbrechts (D) & On the tragic (NO). He studied from 2010 to 2015 at the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe (D) in the class of Prof. Stephan Balkenhol.