NEW SKIN FOR THE OLD CEREMONY



Miriam Hamann, Vera Kox, Franz Schmidt, Dino Steinhoff
Curated by Katja Kottmann & Anna-Lena Werner

18.03 — 01.05.2016
DZIALDOV, BERLIN






In everyday life forms are subject to functions. They relate to a symbolism and to a position that is manifested in society. They suggest conditions and surroundings; they can be defined and correlated by simple attributes. Encounters with such dispositive forms are created by industrial and product design, but they are also enabled through social rites, behavioural patterns and subconscious movements – every day, all day long. We hardly recognise them, because they meet our expectations; because they fit into a pattern that we already know.

But what happens when these anticipations are being corrupted? When something is being changed? When forms do not fulfil the functions anymore, or when they never have? When familiar materials represent the opposite of what they are, or – at least – of what we project on them? What happens when their design has no more purpose? When the object is being robbed of its function?
Does the form then gain a poetic value? Does it then fulfil our fetishized desire for aestheticism? Does it reinvent itself? The exhibition wants to pose these questions. “New Skin for the Old Ceremony”, title of an LP by Lenard Cohen from 1974, emphasises the sensitive perception and reformulation of social everyday rites along installation and sculpture-based works of the artists Miriam Hamann, Vera Kox, Franz Schmidt und Dino Steinhof.


Installation Views

Individual Works

Dino Steinhof
Franz Schmidt
Miriam Hamann
 Vera Kox