“On Earth We´re Briefly Gorgeous”

February 6 to March 7, 2020
Potsdamer Str. 97, 10785 Berlin

Group Show with Hanne Darboven, Cécile B. Evans & Yuri Pattison, Wilhelm Klotzek, Jonas Lipps, Matt Mullican, Lisa Oppenheim, Kay Rosen and Lily van der Stokker.

How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing.
The eye, alone in its socket, doesn´t even know there´s another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty. Opening the front door to the first snowfall of my life, you whispered, “Look”.
Ocean Vuong

History splits up and gets interrupted, it repeats itself and runs backwards but always seems to follow a subsequent direction. Amidst this course, we highlight events and record anecdotes, to further construct monuments of memory.

In his autobiographical debut novel „On Earth We´re Briefly Gorgeous“, Ocean Vuong tells us his story, the story of his family, as a chain of moments. As the daughter of an US-american soldier and a vietnamese farmer, Vuong’s mother was born during the Vietnam war. „Thus”, Vuong says, “my mother exists. Thus I exist. Thus no bombs = no family = no me.”[1] The book recalls the war as a personal retelling of a story, though it is a historical document, written in the now.

The artists in this exhibition try something similar. With their artworks, they leave traces. Traces to themselves, to gain a brief place in time, or traces to a gap and a storyline, that almost disappeared, and now, as we walk by, passes through the pupil and says „Look“.

Text by Elisa Maria Schmitt
Translation by Kris Khosrowkhani

 

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/14/on-earth-we-are-briefly-gorgeous-ocean-vuong-review