Martin Ebner, Kitty Kraus
Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius
Curators: Audrius Pocius and Nicholas Matranga
2016.09.16–10.19
The Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius is proud to present an exhibition by Martin Ebner and Kitty Kraus, living and working in Berlin. Both artists, although exercising a peculiar and different artistic vocabulary throughout their practice, were invited to create an unfolding dialogue throughout the process of the exhibition. Martin Ebner, working primarily within the spheres of film and publishing, whereas Kitty Kraus is known for her sensibility to space, which manifests through her objects, light and glass installations. Together they set to explore not only the premises of CAC here in Vilnius, but also the social and cultural milieu surrounding it. The result might have been unexpected for both as common themes among the artists, such as direction, speed and transparency have surfaced.
In the North Hall, Kitty Kraus has installed a telescope directed at the Polar Star through a hole in the exterior wall, accompanied by a park bench with a small and bright spot of light falling on it, inviting the visitor to sit down. In the meanwhile, Ebner’s tall transparent metal roofs recast into architecture, like shadows of houses carrying monochrome images up in the air. The horizon of the walls of the exhibition hall is covered with colour paintings, depicting simple forms found in the urban: traces of objects and language. While the filmic moment of gradual and constant change of light and shadow is accentuated by a projected light door appearing slowly in space and disappearing again.
In the Atrium, the collaborative installation of a spinning water sprinkler jetting out a disk of 360 degrees geometrically cuts through the space, simultaneously destroying sight and making glass and water visible, unpredictable yet precise as a clock, and in its own distinct sound.
Thus, divulging a distant relation and pinpointing the self along an elaborate constellation of coordinates, the North Hall becomes an observation deck of the imaginary. The establishment of a fixed position functions as an apparatus to chart a bearing, referring to the movement of the earth and the individual, revealing the complex and fickle everyday relations among people and objects, encouraging to rethink what seems as clear without saying and what remains unnoticed while the star itself remains invisible.
Martin Ebner is an artist working in Berlin. His work for the past decade has focused film and video, while working with installation, sculpture and images. He is also a publisher and editor of Starship Magazine, together with Ariane Müller, Nikola Dietrich and Henrik Olesen. Other collaborations include artists Judith Hopf and Florian Zeyfang (Poor Man’s Expression). Ebner’s work has been exhibited and screened at public and private institutions including: Berlin International Film Festival – Berlinale; Kunstverein Hamburg; Kunsthaus Graz; Artist Space, New York; KW – Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Salvador Allende Museum, Santiago; Extra City, Antwerp. www.martinebner.org
Kitty Kraus works in Berlin. Primarily working in sculpture, Kraus’ nuanced approach to object making, while having a familiarity to Minimalism, reflects a sense of transformation, fragility, and decay, that connects it to society’s current need for urgency. Her work has been shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions, at institutions including: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Kunsthalle Zürich; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne; Hamburger Kusthalle, Hamburg; Marres – Centre for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht; The David Roberts Art Foundation, London; Sculpture Center, New York; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.
Together with: Tenzing Barshee, Mihaela Chiriac, Haytham El-Wardany, Monika Kalinauskaitė, Valentinas Klimašauskas, Ariane Müller
Exhibition sponsors: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, Lithuanian Council for Culture, JCDecaux Lithuania, UAB Vandens lašai
Exhibition partners : Vilnius Pataphysics Institute, Starship Magazine
Information partner: frieze
Thanks: Claudio Ramirez Castelli, Edgaras Gerasimovičius, Viltė Girdzijauskaitė, Simonas Gudelis, Žilvinas Landzbergas, Adriana Lara, Mykolas Leckas, Alejandro Olávarri, Domas Ramanauskas, Šarūnas Paškevičius, Tomas Pečiukonis, Žilvinas Žilinskas
