Exhibition & Special-Events
30th of September – 14th of Oktober 2023
Monday – Saturday 12 – 8pm
Galerie neurotitan
c/o Schwarzenberg e.V.
Rosenthaler Straße 39
D-10178 Berlin www.neurotitan.de
„The otherness of KAI’s artworks makes us recognize the otherness in ourselves.“– Marcel René Marburger
Steel, fire and the immense beauty of the monstrous – KAI’s art transports us into poetic machine worlds, into an avant-garde oeuvre of kinetic metal sculptures. Since 1983, the multimedia artist has been breathing life into technology in a creative act – KAI’s metal art has become a trademark of an individual art movement. The book KAI (Cologne: Edition_, 2023), which has just been published, reveals in German and English his oeuvre of decades of metal sculpture and performance art, which has shaped the spirit of authentic Berlin avant-garde ever since and has made a lasting mark on the local art and cultural scene. Thus KAI’s central position as a player in Berlin’s independent scene also becomes clear, for example as a co-founder of the artist group Dead Chickens, the independent cultural house Haus Schwarzenberg and the artists‘ club Eschschloraque Rümschrümp, or with WERK.STATT.44 and the Dead Chickens‘ Monsterkabinett.
KAI’s work, however, also stands for networks of artists and cultural workers that are constantly developing anew – this is precisely what the exhibition accompanying the book presentation illustrates: In the midst of his equally somber and aesthetic art, a presentation platform is developing for other artists and actors, allowing various fields such as sculpture, painting, photography, and drawing, as well as word and writing, to enter into dialogue. Special events will not only provide insights into the history of KAI’s work, for example with a view to the legendary Dead Chickens, but also into central locations and production sites that have helped to shape Berlin as an art and culture location to this day.
Last but not least, the otherness in KAI’s art designs its own realities, which we encounter on a direct path to our own inner selves – raw and sharp-edged, poetic and touching. Thus he transforms the neurotitan gallery into a pulsating world of aesthetic extremes that invites us to trace his art, on the aesthetically abysmal trip to ourselves.
Text: Vera Fischer
PROGRAMME
OPENING & PERFORMANCE:
Saturday, 30th of September 2023, 6pm at neurotitan
Welcome: Prof. Dr. Marcel René Marburger
Performance: KAI, MUNSHA
Aftershowparty at Eschschloraque from 10pm
CINEMA SPECIAL:
Thursday 5th October 2023, 8pm at Kino Central
DEAD CHICKENS a documentary art comedy by Malika Ziouech (16mm; 21min; S/W; 1989)
NIHIL by Uli M Schüppel (58min; S/W; 1987)
CLOSING PARTY & HAUS SCHWARZENBERG – SPECIAL:
Saturday, 14th of October 2023, 6pm at neurotitan
Lecture: Dr. Vera Fischer
Panel: Dr. Vera Fischer, KAI, Henryk Weiffenbach, Jutta Weitz, Moderation: Rebecca Lilliecrona
Performance: Thomas Mahmoud, Edu Delgado Lopez, Luca Andriola
Aftershowparty at Eschschloraque from 10pm
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
KAI | Peter Schütze | Bodo Albrand | frl.winter | VELA | Cornelius Perino | Ceren Oykut | Hugo de Carvalho | Horst Steel | Javier Moya | Henryk Weiffenbach
KAI www.bykai.net
KAI – Artist, performer, sculptor, maker of kinetic metal sculptures and installations. Founding member of the artist group Dead Chickens (1986), artist gallery Dead Chickens Warehouse (1990), art association Haus Schwarzenberg (1995), artist’s club Eschschloraque Rümpschrümp (1995), Dead Chickens Museum Monsterkabinett (2010) and the artist’s workshop WERK.STATT.44 (2011). KAI, born 1966, lives and works in Berlin.
His kinetic sculptures are to be found in various places, such as: „Feuergarten“, Hunsrück, Germany (2017 and „Schnabelschere“, Haus Schwarzenberg, Berlin, Germany (1997). He also makes various kinetic sculptures for events such as „KAI’s Computer Press“, Chaos Communication Congress, Congress Center in Hamburg, Germany (2014), and „Feuer Aus Dem Rohr“ for the opening of Wingas, Erfurt, Germany (2005). He has participated in numerous exhibitions, including Vom Funken Zum Pixel/Kunst+Neue Medien, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany (2007), and Tag des Denkmals, Teufelsberg, Berlin, Germany (2013).
As Dead Chickens he made many exhibitions and shows, such as: X-Position, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany (1994), Theater Festival, Polverigi, Italy (1997) „Chimech, A Mechanical Creatures Odyssee“ for Haupstadt der Kulturen Lille 2004, France, (2004), and Dead Chickens at Big Day Out Festival, Sydney-Melbourne-Adelaide-Gold Coast, Australia (2007). He often collaborates with artists from different disciplines, making performances and organizing exhibitions such as „Beton, Stahl, Taube“, Galerie Neurotitan, Berlin, Germany (2015).
Peter Schütze www.peter-schuetze.com
Peter Schütze, a sculptor from Berlin, shapes metal sculptures with emotional depth and expressiveness. He showcases the fusion of art and technology in mesmerizing new kinetic creations. An artist who continuously pushes the boundaries of his work, exploring and redefining the limits of his craft. His latest works are still in the process of creation.
Bodo Albrand
Bodo Albrand, born in Berlin and a trained carpenter, devotes himself nowadays entirely to his art and music. Old is combined with new, already existing things are recycled, new works of art are created. His art direction could be captured as a kind of surreal steampunk.
Bodo Albrand makes music together with Dirk G. Winkler as Caustic Crank and together with Edu Delgado Lopez and Luca Andriola in KRATZ, where for example his self-built crank bass or newly invented string instruments are used.
frl.winter www.instagram.com/studio_moravia
The portrait of KAI was created in 2006 in a studio in the Tacheles. Impressed by his work as an artist, as well as his idiosyncratic manner, which oscillates between untamed personality and contradictory love of knowledge, enabled me to find a foothold as a person and artist in Berlin.
His inimitable willingness to help was already manifested in the object „the hand“ (2004), in wich it was only a matter of giving one, without explaining how it is possible to stand up. My homage to KAI is complemented in the silence of the painting of the „Queen of Cups.“ (2021)
VELA www.metalpig.de www.instagram.com/metal.pig
„I’m in love with steel – strong, sharp, hard, soft, bendy, dangerous, responsive … Steel vibrates with every movement or sound in its surroundings, and it reacts to the smallest changes in temperature, thus ‚breathing’ and pulsating with the rhythm of life!“
VELA lives and works in Berlin since 1998, firing up the independent art scene as a sculptor, installation artist, performer and a DJ. Fascinated by the properties of steel and welding, as well as by the dynamics of interactions between small parts in a bigger picture, VELA plays with structures and shapes, creating sculptures which are addressing social dynamics while referring to the animal world, and are often presented in collaborations with performance and dance artists, as well as in the context of theatre and movies.
Cornelius Perino www.perino.de
Perino constructs his objects and images with a visionary fury that finds its way uninhibited into his work. Abruptly, with enormous aesthetic force, the most conceivably diverse materials and techniques collides with each other. Surfaces can be shifted, rotating roller segments produce ever new image variations, and slowly descending flat washers on threaded rods compose symphonies of sound, explosions and black powder create new pictorial works.
As a restless wanderer through the medial worlds of the art scene, Perino`s creative output is always full of surprises, like now with phase II of his great puzzle „WAY OF LIFE“, started in 2020.
Ceren Oykut www.cerenoykut.com
Ceren Oykuts (1978/Istanbul) traces surprising, archaic lines that tell stories about urban transformation, animals and language. Her drawings, on small scraps of paper as well as on large rolls of paper, extends classic techniques in terms of size and space.
With a focus on small details, Oykut conveys a condensed image of an ungraspable panorama that blends absurdity of everyday life and its circumstances. Oykut also works with artists on interdisciplinary projects that mix sound and different models of visual representation.
Hugo de Carvalho www.hugodecarvalho.de
Originally from Rio de Janeiro, where he studied classical ballet, Hugo de Carvalho danced professionally on the international stage with, amongst others, São Paulo Opera, Carla Fracci, Pina Bausch and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. He went on to study choreography and theatre direction at the Ernst Busch academy of dramatic arts in Berlin. In 2007 he qualified as a chef at the IHK college in Berlin.
In 2018, Hugo revived his dormant passion for the visual arts and found a base in Haus Schwarzenberg, a central Berlin cultural centre. He has since then focused his creative power on brush and canvas, experimenting prolifically with different painting techniques. Thematically, the diverse works from this period are linked by an investigation into the interplay between perspectives on reality, and transparency, reflection and subsurfaces.
Painter, chef and dancer, Hugo’s ongoing inspiration throughout his work, is dynamic movement and composition. Each discipline informs the other.
Horst Steel
Horst Steel has been working as a freelance metal designer in Berlin since 2001. He draws his inspiration from the direct encounter with the place and the material. His early works are kinetic sculptures that are strongly reminiscent of the works of Jean Tinguely. The sculptures were always part and parcel of performances. In a further creative phase, aluminum sculptures are created in a sand-casting process. Jointed and found everyday objects are exclusively used as positive mould. He describes his art as metal morphosis.
Javier Moya www.moya.digital
Javier Maya is a cinematographer who has lived in Berlin for 30 years. As a native Colombian, he has a very unique, sensitized eye when it comes to lighting, format design and the precise moment of shutter release, always striving to capture the „eternity of the moment“ as Cartier Bresson puts it.
Henryk Weiffenbach www.henrykweiffenbach.de
Henryk Weiffenbach has been working as a freelance photographer since the 1980s, focusing on band, portrait, fashion and art photography. Born in Berlin, he has been a member of the artist group Dead Chickens since the early 1990s (now no longer active as a collective), he is co-operator of the Eschschloraque Rümschrümp and also co-founder of the Art Association Schwarzenberg e.V. From the very beginning, Henryk has accompanied numerous exhibitions and other events at the neurotitan gallery and Haus Schwarzenberg with his camera and captured them in pictorial documentation.
BOOK INFO
Layout / Graphic Design: Sandra Christine Dick
Translations: Anna Kuom & Lisa Smith
Editorial support: Dr. Vera Fischer
Editor: Prof. Dr. Marcel René Marburger
Publisher: Edition_
Printed by: druckhaus köthen
Printed in: Berlin
Release Date: 2023
ISBN 978-3-9814246-4-5
Distribution: KAI: kai@bykai.net; https://bykai.net
Köln: Edition_, 2023
For more Information and Press Pictures please contact:
Rebecca Lilliecrona: rebecca@haus-schwarzenberg.org
Tel: 030 30 87 25 73
www.neurotitan.de | www.haus-schwarzenberg.org