Dirk Bell Grid(love)r

  Dirk Bell Grid(love)r 15 March-12 May
   with Frederic Detjens and Marcus Steinweg
   Opening Thursday 15/3 7:30-10 pm
   at:

   Epikourou 26 & Korinis 4 Athens

   
Dirk Bell, Grid(love)r, 2012, installation view


Dirk Bell, Grid(love)r, 2012, installation view



 
Dirk Bell, NewMen 2011, collage on found poster, 90 x 60 cm / 35.4 x 23.6 in
 



Dirk Bell, BurnOuTopian, 2012, steel, 160 x 120 x 0.5 cm / 62.9 x 47.2 x 0.19 in

The artist dreams a dream- a utopia where love, freedom, free love and a new society of men and

women will uncover a more variable and profound relation to life and nature by effacing the dominant 

economies of impassibility.

Deleuze and Guattari argue that language is composed of order-words which are repeated in collective 

assemblages of enunciation. Beneath the order-words there are pass-words that counter the stoppages 

and transform the compositions of order into components of passage.

This exhibition is about words, pass-words,  new  alphabets,  assemblages,  modes  of  composition,

structures, slogans, phrasal elements that veer towards a revolutionary potentiality. The  phabet, 

conceived by Dirk Bell as a corporeal intervention in the regime of letters is designed in a new font and 

introduces  -a symbol that has made its appearance in various installations, sculptural objects and 

collages he has produced in the last two years-  as  a  substitute for the letter A. Typically 

interchangeable with the often aggressive notions of “top”, “first class”, “dominant” (alpha-male), the 

first letter of the alphabet is swept up by 

The metal grids, laser-cut out of steel sheets are phrases / puns extracted by observing a society plied 

by systems that harden every day conditions of living: WORKOUTOPIAN, BURNOUTOPIAN, 

ENDISNEAR, BRUTA ISMART.

The exhibition is framed by Bell’s invitation to philosopher Marcus Steinweg and artist/filmmaker

Frederic Detjens.  Marcus Steinweg is participating with a series of analytical diagrams addressing

Greek philosophy, questions of power and the future of Europe while Frederic Detjens will be showing

a film that takes place in the studio he shares with Bell in Wedding, Berlin. The film is an assemblage

of images featuring art works in progress, actors and dancers moving within installations as well as a 
maneuver between the classical use of paint in the fine arts and spectacular Hollywood movie 
techniques (special effects). With this gesture Dirk Bell intermingles the visualization of concepts 
culled from high (philosophy) and low (mainstream culture) with objects characterized by conflicting 
energies (romantic tendencies realized through mechanic processes).



Excerpt from Marcus Steinweg talk on the Promise of Consistency: Art and Philosophy, March 15