Anybody entering the world of Norbert Brunner, suddenly and effectively encounters connections, which are diverse like a reflective polyhedron, but make possible a new unit of form, sense and feelings. Undoubtedly he has an enjoyable irreverent mind, which effectively conjures encounter, spontaneity and creative diversity. It seems as if the complex is recovery, laughing is allowed while thinking, playing an approach and success simple – this is what is happening.
In this airy atmosphere “objectifications of the mind” are possible, they are initiated by means of cheerful relativisations, alterations of the subject and questions of location. Norbert Brunner gets to the point with his ideas. He starts off with the idea about himself: After all he is not an artist, at least not a deeply self-centered artist, rather a “creator”, a person in a creative process, one who strives to be in the world in a unique and authentic manner. A curious character, who wants to explore human ways of life, and ideologies of different cultures. He has traveled the world, someone who has torn down inner frontiers and became aware, that it is a geographical and social coincidence what is believed, discovered, evaluated.
In this sense his art is subversive in means of ideology and concept of art. It brings relativity in any life form to mind. As an artist Norbert Brunner knows about his “self-portraits”, he knows about the fragile diversity in his inner self and does not take socially sanctioned identity at face value. He takes intellectual and emotional identity more seriously. He knows about the responsibility and possibilities of self-determination. It means to tolerate the dynamic insecurity of a consistent process, a continuous tying, dissolving and re-tying of a net of mental/emotional episodes, states of mind and dispositions, a sketching, dismissing and altering of the pictures of ourselves and the world, which give us an understanding of what is happening to us. This transforms us into individuals with empathy, which can connect beyond boundaries.
Norbert Brunner visualizes these mental processes in his work by composing objects of many dots which develop into a complete image through the perspective of the viewer. By doing so, he challenges the viewer’s increased experience of objectivity, he forces him into an active process of co-design of the object – seduces to a communication, which – deconstructed into its semiological points – makes the inner meaning of communication and uniqueness perceivable through an alert consciousness. Literally.
This segmentation and analysis of closed operating systems can be understood as cheerful deconstructions. These liberated elements become universally understandable forms of connections, which carry forward to any kind of “Lebensbühnen und Welterzeugungen”.
By putting the viewer into the center of creation, by making him to an artist himself, at the same time the artist is demanding the viewer’s courage to be prepared to abandon his definite place, to expose himself, to unravel in a free game of forces. The gestural bridge he is constructing between objects and individuals in all of his projects, which interconnect, are meant to be an invitation as well as a challenge. They show that subjective sensation and discovery of things of the world and the constitution of these things are essentially finely tuned to another, changing spheres – they are creative processes of reality which ceaselessly transform and change. Each moment of our own existence is a new perspective of our position within the “system of dancing dots”, which develops to complete images only by backpedaling. The images become objective manifestations. In this context the viewer is no longer creator or recipient – they are “everybody or nobody” (Nietzsche).
Within the poetry of Brunner’s spaces communication does not run out in a game of sending and receiving, it is not less than an analogy to existence – an open object-less adventure. (From an essay by Claudia Weinzierl, Eikon #64, Feb. 2009)
GROUP EXHIBITION "Deconstructing Myths and Realities"
The parallel exhibition will showcase the work of eminent and emerging artists originally from the Middle East and Arab world. It reflects the work of artists who have all focused on aspects of postmodernism, deconstruction of social and ideological norms, the role of women in our society, the changing face of corporate cultures. Ultimately the artists are concerned with the transition and change of norms within society and how they impact upon individuals and how these individuals respond to these changes.
Amal Kenawy’s work spans a variety of media, creating spaces in which she analyses her own identity with the world around her. Amal Kenawy has participated at numerous biennials ie an exhibition held at the Zenobio Institute as part of the 52nd International Venice Biennal, 8th Sharjah biennale, Dubai, 1st Singapore Biennial, amongst others. Her work has also been featured at at MUkHA Contemporary Art Museum Antwerp and Kunsthalle, Vienna. Her work is in major public collections.
Inci Eviner’s “pen-and-ink drawings on canvas are often whimsical and harrowing. These unlikely works combine nods to Sigmar Polke and Louise Bourgeois with references to the rich visual heritage of Turkey” (Christopher Phillips). Her work has been seen in exhibitions at Deutsche Bank collection, Guggenheim, Berlin, ISCP, New York and Venice Biennale, as well as the Shanghai Biennale.
Mitra Tabrizian, work has been featured in exhibitions at the Tate Britain, Folkwang Essen Museum and Andy Warhol Museum. Further exhibitions are pending at Queens, Chelsea and Antwerp Museum. In her body of work which started in the 80ies, Tabrizian questions our assumption that developments in recent years have in fact been progress and shows us the downside of our postmodernist society i.e. isolation, moral decay and the increasingly psychopathic tendencies in corporate cultures. Progress clearly has a downside which is only too evident in Tabrizian’s work, as typified by the emotional coldness portrayed in several of her works: especially in the image of the twins from the “Beyond the limits” series, who remain coldly indifferent whilst their father commits suicide.
Khaled Hafez examines the constant reproduction of divergence within and between the popular culture with an emphasis on his native Egypt, of France where he has lived for several years, and of the United States, which he regards as consumer society per se. Through painting and video, Hafez has concentrated primarily on the construction of certain categories and the overlaps between them (East/West, sacred/commercial, old/new, good/evil, male/female). His work shows how these dichotomies rest on the international system of commodities that creates both the ideas of (cultural) similarity and difference, as well as affective attachments to certain histories and identities. Harfez has exhibited extensively and internationally. He was the winner of the Dakar biennale, has participated at the Sharjah Biennale and Singapore Biennale, and will be shown at the the Queens Museum and Thessaloniki Biennale later this year. He is in major public collections.
Huda Lufti, born in Cairo, has been working as an artist since 1992, primarily in mixed media with collage and painting and sculptural works that incorporate found objects from the streets of Cairo. Lutfi is trained as a historian specializing in gender relations, sexuality, and culture in the Arab-Muslim world and has taught Islamic and Arab Cultural History at the American University, Cairo since 1983. She exhibited at the French Cultural Center in Alexandria, The Arab World Institute in Paris, The Museum of Modern Art in Bonn and The National Museum of Mali in Bamako, among many other regional and international galleries. She is currently working on a book to document her decades long practice.
The Palestinian photographer Steve Sabella has recently won the Ellen Auerbach Award (2008) granted by the Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts) in Berlin, as well he was short listed for the Terry O’Neil Award of Contemporary Photography in the UK (2008), and was a prize winner in the 2002 A.M. Qattan Foundation Young Artist Award in Palestine. Sabella is one of the most widely exhibited artists in Palestine today..
