The PRAXES Parlors were live events, such as performances, discussions, film
screenings, talks, and workshops, led by local and international voices from
across the cultural field.
As the year came to a close, so did PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art’s inaugural exhibition, event, and publication Cycle dedicated to Gerard Byrne
and Jutta Koether. Guests joined us in celebrating the grand finale of this
maiden voyage at PRAXES on Saturday 14 December. Koether’s exhibition culminated with a special performance event, and later, a once-lost
work by Byrne, A Crime Dramatically Re-Constructed, Again, was screened. Free Our/Vodka was served, as usual, along with mulled wine and
food. To conclude the night, Frisk Frugt added to the festivities with a live
performance built around a homemade toy-flute organ.
As the year came to a close, so did PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art’s inaugural exhibition, event, and publication Cycle dedicated to Gerard Byrne
and Jutta Koether. Guests joined us in celebrating the grand finale of this
maiden voyage at PRAXES on Saturday 14 December. Koether’s exhibition culminated with a special performance event, and later, a once-lost
work by Byrne, A Crime Dramatically Re-Constructed, Again, was screened. Free Our/Vodka was served, as usual, along with mulled wine and
food. To conclude the night, Frisk Frugt added to the festivities with a live
performance built around a homemade toy-flute organ.
Guests joined us for a field trip-cum-conversation to Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie with Jutta Koether and Graham Domke, curator at Dundee Contemporary
Arts. Building on their exchange started around Koether’s solo exhibition, “Seasons and Sacrements,” at DCA earlier this year and continued in a PRAXES Paper by Domke, we
(re-)visited a selection of Older Master still lifes (Piero di Cosimo, Jan Fyt,
Nicolas Poussin, and more) that have served as inspiration for Koether’s work.
This event was a live enactment and continuation of a dialogue about Jutta Koether’s three centerpieces at PRAXES, written by Szewczyk and Roelstraete for the PRAXES Papers, published online: www.praxes.de/papers.htm
Thriving on the notion of exchange inherent in Koether’s artistic practice—notably her seminal project The Inside Job (1991) and her current (therapeutic) dialogues with friends—the curators “analyzed” the artist’s recent triptych Viktoria, Luise, and Isabelle, and how the individual works, one by one, have held audience at PRAXES. From the two embellished sculptures and their namesake – the daughter of the last German Kaiser, Princess Viktoria Luise –to the gouache Isabelle (currently on view), the conversation assayed “painting as art” versus “art as painting” as well as questions of jewels, genitals, guns, and puns.
Monika Szewczyk is Visual Arts Program Curator at Logan Center for the Arts at
the University of Chicago.
Dieter Roelstraete is the Manilow Senior Curator at the
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Gerard Byrne, installation view.
The fifth and final exhibition module of Gerard Byrne’s work opened on November 20. Testing relationships between intention and
improvisation, artworks and production, absorption and theatricality, this
exhibition presented the re-appearance of previously shown works, a tree as
sculpture as prop, interludes of enacted footage from PRAXES, as well as a
newcomer: the work Untitled acting exercise (in the third person) from 2008.
Tirdad Zolghadr is a writer and curator. He frequently contributes to frieze magazine and is Editor-at-Large for Cabinet magazine. His curatorial work includes engagements for the Taipei
Biennial in 2010, the UAE pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009, and the
Sharjah Biennial in 2005. Zolghadr curated the exhibition “Monogamy” at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard in upstate New York, featuring Gerard Byrne
and Sarah Pierce. Neither a collaboration, nor a classic duo show, the
exhibition explored advantages of long-term familiarities and ideas that bleed into each other over time.
Sven Anderson is an artist working between Ireland and the
US since 2001. Anderson’s work explores the act of listening within diverse architectural, physical, social, and emotional contexts, with a focus on public sound installation and urban sound design. Alongside his own practice, Anderson works as
a system designer for Gerard Byrne – a relationship that has largely influenced recent installations at PRAXES and Bard.
A conversation between Byrne and Anderson is available for download at: www.praxes.de/Byrne.htm
US since 2001. Anderson’s work explores the act of listening within diverse architectural, physical, social, and emotional contexts, with a focus on public sound installation and urban sound design. Alongside his own practice, Anderson works as
a system designer for Gerard Byrne – a relationship that has largely influenced recent installations at PRAXES and Bard.
A conversation between Byrne and Anderson is available for download at: www.praxes.de/Byrne.htm
At the opening of Jutta Koether’s third culminating component of Koether’s exhibition cycle at PRAXES, the framed gouache Isabelle commanded the stage. A pink and orange phallus—evoking feminine connotations and referencing a priapic object famously carried
by Louise Bourgeois in an iconic Robert Mapplethorpe photograph—Isabelle was occasionally joined by five paintings put on the low shelves placed on its
surrounding walls. Emanating a fluid, live force—a jouissance that has even shaped its frame—the work became the last narcissistic object to front the aluminum mirrors on
the walls.
Gerard Byrne, Tirdad Zolghadr, and Sven Anderson at PRAXES.
Jutta Koether, Isabelle, 2013. Detail.
George Baker is Associate Professor of Art History at UCLA, where he has taught
modern and contemporary art and theory since 2003. A New York and Paris based
critic for Artforum
throughout the 1990s, he also works as an editor of the journal
October and its publishing imprint October Books. A decade ago, Baker wrote an essay linking Gerard Byrne's work to theater and the much explored, little discussed influence of Bertolt Brecht in artistic practices contemporary to the time of publishing. For his lecture at PRAXES, Baker spoke on his current research.
throughout the 1990s, he also works as an editor of the journal
October and its publishing imprint October Books. A decade ago, Baker wrote an essay linking Gerard Byrne's work to theater and the much explored, little discussed influence of Bertolt Brecht in artistic practices contemporary to the time of publishing. For his lecture at PRAXES, Baker spoke on his current research.
The day after the opening of “Luise”, Jenny Jaskey gave a talk about Jutta Koether’s “Mad Garland” series, followed by a conversation between Jaskey, Jutta Koether and PRAXES
Directors Rhea Dall and Kristine Siegel.
Jenny Jaskey is the Curator of The Artist’s Institute in New York. She received her MA from CCS Bard College, New York and
has worked with Jutta Koether as both a curator and scholar. Jaskey is the
author of a PRAXES Paper on Viktoria and Koether’s ongoing “Mad Garland” motif, to be published in connection with Jaskey’s visit at PRAXES. All Papers can be downloaded free of charge here
George Baker at PRAXES.
Jenny Jaskey at PRAXES.
On October 23 we opened Byrne’s fourth exhibition module “Around that time” centered on 1984 and beyond. The piece consists of several parts, including a series of black-and-white
photographs evoking the Americana of the 1960s. Another part of 1984 and beyond, a three-channel film, presents a re-staging of twelve science fiction writers
discussing their visions of the future, originally printed in Playboy magazine
in 1963. The three channel video reconstructs the outmoded, yet lingering ideas
the then future held: aging, overpopulation, space travel, sexual habits, and
alien life in 1984.
On this night we celebrated the opening of Koether’s second installment at PRAXES, centered on Luise (2013), a circular PVC shell embellished with metal hinges, fake gold, and a
knocked-over wine glass, with a large golden shell emanating a pulsating light.
Paintings from Koether’s vast practice will alternate in the space as occasional readings and
connotations. As the previously shown sculpture Viktoria and the gouache Isabelle, Luise is a protagonist in Koether’s triptych exhibition structure at PRAXES – and the starting point of a speculative dossier.
Why it’s time for Imperial, again, is based on a 1980 advertise-ment from the November issue of National Geographic staging Lee Iacocca, former chairman of Chrysler, in conversation with Frank
Sinatra. Going back in time and with autumn slowly sneaking up on us, we used
the opening night of this exhibition module to invite everyone over for Sinatra’s favorite Jack Daniel’s drink and a bit of crooning.
For his second exhibition module at PRAXES, Byrne presented a new black-and-white photograph from his ongoing Newsstand series, a reconstruction of a 1961 theater prop by Alberto Giacometti
created for Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and the single channel film *ZAN -T185 r.1: (Interview) v.1, no. 4 - v.2, no. 6, 19 (1969 -Feb. 1972); (Andy
Warhol's (Interview) v.2, no. 21 - v.3, no. 9, (2007) – in which Byrne reconstructed six interviews with peripheral celebrities from
early issues of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. For the opening of “Older works" we included a conversation with Byrne, discussing the strategies at
work in the staged and backwards movement through his practice.
Jutta Koether, Luise, 2013. Detail.
The first of Jutta Koether’s three exhibition modules opened on 31 August, 2013. It coincided with the
launch of PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art.
The first of Gerard Byrne’s five exhibition modules opened on
31 August, 2013. It coincided with the launch of PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art.
31 August, 2013. It coincided with the launch of PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art.
PRAXES
Bergen Assembly
Østre Skostredet 5 – 7
Bergen 5017, Norway
PRAXES’s Berlin venue has closed. In 2016 PRAXES will open its new iteration in Bergen,
as part of the Bergen Assembly
