Eli Cortiñas, Débora Delmar, Nicolás Lamas
13 September - 12 October, 2019
Zeller van Almsick
Franz Josefs Kai 3
Vienna, Austria
one large men’s black plastic work glove
one dense mat of oak pollen
one unblemished dead rat
one white plastic bottle cap
one smooth stick of wood[1]
Walking along a coastline, Jane Bennett happened across an
odd assemblage. An agglomeration of things floating on the edge of the water.
Her philosophical crusade through Western metaphysics is an attempt find the
source of this uncertain “thingness.” The recipe for matter soup is produced of
ingredients crushed together through causality and time. Pressure and space
combine the abandoned, forsaken, the dead. Economic and biological life cycles
have come to an end. A conglomerate debris at the fringe of earth and sea. Bennett’s
academic venture begins at the edges, but she is interested in connecting the
resolute vibrancy of stuff to the economic and political model that has produced
them, “the sheer volume of commodities, and the hyper-consumptive necessity of
junking them to make room for new ones, conceals the vitality of matter.”[2]
An artificial but recognisable smell of sweet pea blossom
tinges the sanitary air. Chloride designer perfume medley. High-street luxury
shops offer the same products in every major city. Brand-name virtue,
emblazoned shopping bags. Vitrine decorations, polished steel, waxed reflexive
marble, true lustrous quality. Objects of power, things of plenty, gravity of
responsibility. Uniform of authority, work shoes beating pavement. The crushing
weight of abundance slides down through the belly of the beast. Through the
churning insides of fast fashion knock-off, celebrity brands. Street seller souvenirs,
trinkets of portable property[3], second
hand clothing piles in a vintage shop, Humana, cualquier mercadillo. In the chaotic corridors of a flea market,
things search for a second life. Shouts pierce air, the sun bears down, and smoke
combines in an alluvium brew, the smell of tea, sweat, and meat skewers among
old leather and dust. Crushed through dirt. Filtering through into the
glove-pollen-rat-cap-stick
[1] Jane Bennett, Vibrant
Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Duke University Press, 2009. (pg. 4)
[2] ibid (pg. 5)
[3] Charles Dickens, Great
Expectations, Penguin Random House, original 1861.
Mr. Wemmick makes a habit of visiting inmates on death row. They, no longer in need of their portables hand them over to Wemmick who describes portable property as that which can be carried and easily exchanged for cash. Wemmick’s own non-portable property is modelled on a medieval castle equipped with a moat which puts the two sorts of properties in ideological opposition. The first, a modern possession easy to exchange high in liquidity value, the second of the older type with lineage, heritage, and old-fashioned.
Mr. Wemmick makes a habit of visiting inmates on death row. They, no longer in need of their portables hand them over to Wemmick who describes portable property as that which can be carried and easily exchanged for cash. Wemmick’s own non-portable property is modelled on a medieval castle equipped with a moat which puts the two sorts of properties in ideological opposition. The first, a modern possession easy to exchange high in liquidity value, the second of the older type with lineage, heritage, and old-fashioned.
Eli Cortiñas (1979, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain) lives and works in Berlin. She is professor at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK) and studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and at the European Film College Ebeltoft, Denmark.
A large part of Cortiñas’ practice revolves around the idea of challenging cinematic memory through analysing and re-editing pre-existing footage or her own material. Cortiñas work has been widely shown, solo shows include Remixers never die at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius (2018), Double Feature: Eli Cortiñas, SCHIRN Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2017), 12 x 12: Eli Cortiñas, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, in 2015 and Love is worn around the neck at Kunstraum Innsbruck in 2012. Her work was part of group exhibitions, such as That, Around Which The Universe Revolves, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin in 2018, Film – Footage – Photography at the Museum for Photography in Braunschweig, Titre Provisoire, Kunsthalle Darmstadt and From cutting and ripping, La Virreina Center of the Image, Barcelona (all 2017), Prospectif Cinema, Centre Pompidou, Paris, The Human Condition: Session II, Museum of Modern Art, Moscow (both 2016), Villa Massimo 2014, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (2015), Rencontres Internationales Paris/Madrid/Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2014).
Débora Delmar (1986, Mexico City) lives and works in London. She recently completed the Postgraduate Programme at the Royal Academy of Arts and previously attended the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Her work deals with globalisation, marketing, and consumer products in order to draw attention to class consciousness. Through her work she highlights the increasing trend of worldwide cultural hegemony. The work of Débora Delmar has been presented in solo and duo exhibitions like Stressed, Blessed, and Coffee Obsessed, Gallleria Piú, Bologna, Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, (with Sung Tieu), Royal Academy of Arts, Corporate Façades, Soft Opening, London (all 2018), Upward Mobility, Modern Art Oxford (2015) and Body Blend Trade Culture, Museo Universitareo del Chopo, curated by Daniel Garza Usabiaga, Mexico City (2014). Group exhibitions include It Takes All the Fucking Time, curated by Michelangelo Miccolis, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich (2018)Dreamlands, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the 9th Berlin Biennale (both 2016) and Bread and Roses, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw and Biennial of the Americas: NOW!, curated by Lauren A. Wright, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver, Follow, FACT, Liverpool (all 2015).
Nicolás Lamas (1980, Lima, Peru) lives and works in Brussels. Lamas explores concepts of time, humanity, power, and technology in assemblages that focus on the hybrid nature of reality.
Lamas' recent solo and duo shows include Becoming animal (duo show with Petra Feriancová) at Tenderpixel, London, Against the Boundary of its own Definition, Ladera Oeste, Guadalajara MX (both 2018), The form of decay, P/////AKT in Amsterdam (2017) and Todo objeto es un espacio temporal, Espai 13 (Fundació Joan Miró), Barcelona (2016). Nicolás Lamas work has also been included in group shows such as Something happened, CCCC, Valencia, Drowning in a sea of data, Casa Encendida, curated by Joao Laia, Madrid, Souvenirs du Voyage, Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble, Des attentions, Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry-sur-Seine, Paris (all in 2019), Ya no nos importa, Sala de Arte Joven, Madrid (2018), Private choices, Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels, Legado y Divergencia, ICPNA, Lima, Du verb a la communication, Musée Carré d'Art, Mimes (all in 2017), Not really really, The Frédéric de Goldschmidt Collection, Brussels (2016), Presque la même chose, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Mulhouse (2015), The part in the story where a part becomes a part of something else, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2014)
Àngels Miralda (1990, Princeton, New Jersey) lives and works in Terrassa, Catalonia.
In her curatorial practice she is interested in considering artistic practice and its personal scale as a microcosm for industrial and global processes. She explores concepts of landscape and identity, material culture, and mineral consciousness. She has curated exhibitions such as Extraction: Liquid Flames from the Solid Core, GMK, Zagreb; Survival Kit 10: Outlands, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga; Extra-Planetary Commitment, Lítost, Prague (all 2019), Coronation, Horse and Pony Fine Arts, Berlin (2018), Los Cimientos, Los Pilares, y el Firmamento, Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago de Chile, Squishy: eels swim in snakey, Julius, Berlin, Belief in the Power of Gesture, Projektraum LS43, Berlin (all 2017), Secrets in the Carbon Atom, Podium, Oslo (2016) and ...and the soft ground in the garden was also a constellation..., Lychee One, London (2015). She also works as a writer and art critic with catalogue texts published by Centre Pompidou, Paris; Jerwood, London; and Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago de Chile. Her writing is found on platforms such as Echo Gone Wrong, Vilnius; A-Desk, Barcelona; Arts of the Working Class, Berlin & Vienna; and she is contributing editor of Collecteurs Magazine, New York.