Phantom Limb
with: Cornelia Herfurtner, Olga Holzschuh & Markues
presented by MÉLANGE
Venue: Ballon Rouge Collective, Brussels
Opening: November 4, 2022
MÉLANGE is happy to present three very different artistic approaches towards our own bodies. The pathological idea of an amputees phantom limb will be the invisible connection of the exhibition that explores our judicial body which gets extended by law enforcement, our plain human body that is easily stressed out and finally our mental extension of our body that might spread further and further.
Cornelia Herfurtner is a visual artist living in Berlin. She studied Fine Arts at the University of the Arts (Berlin) and at the Emily Carr Institut for Art and Design (Vancouver). Since the end of her studies, exhibitions and residencies abroad, including in the US (NYC, 2020), France (2017), Lithuania (2015) and Italy (2014).
From September to November 2022 she is artist in residency at International Studio & Curatorial Space in New York City, researching social movements and the history of engaged art practices from Heartfield to Decolonize this place.
Exhibitions include: Mélange, Cologne (2022), Very Project Space (2021), Kunstverein Tiergarten | Galerie Nord (2021), After the Butcher, Berlin (2020), Mitte Museum, Berlin (2019), in extenso, Clermont-Ferrand (2017), sign, CIAT, Berlin (2016), Museum für Fotografie, Berlin (2014), W139, Amsterdam (2013) .
Scholarships and grants: Berlin Senate Working Stipend (2022), Berlin Senate Travel Grant New York City (2022), Neustart Stipend awarded by VG Bild Kunst (2021), Neustart Stipend awarded by Stiftung Kunstfonds (2020), DAAD Travel Grant for New York City (2020).
Olga Holzschuh lives and works in Cologne. Her artistic practice is characterized by an intensive examination of the aesthetic, social and psychological effects of technological innovations and the impact of these effects on the social an individual body, regarding the production of images. The media of photography, sculpture and performance are closely intertwined along the questions of physical presence and index. The transitory moment forms thereby the core of her work. This is evident not only in her performances – in which she creates situations that trace control practices of emotions – but also in her works with materials such as soap, photographic solutions and metal, that are well known for their shape-changing properties. Her works have been shown, among others, at EIGEN+ART LAB in Berlin the way we fall, 2021; at KOENIG2 / Christine König Galerie in Vienna (AT) i wish you were different, 2019; at the Kasseler Kunstverein as part of the Dr. Wolfgang Zippel Foundation Art Award analysis on distance, 2018, at the Gallery Weekend in Krakow (PL) without lashes, 2021; and in the film programme of the exhibition And what about your 'Good Morning, New World?, 2018 at the Museum of CCA Hangzhou in China.
Markues works as a visual artist and author. Markues' works implicitly create political spaces in which the foundations of a feminist and diverse community can be experienced. This requires an indeterminacy of these spaces, where prior knowledge and ways of thinking lose their rigidity: Silence becomes a time of preparation. Inherent in this silence is the strategic invisibility of transgender people and also the potentials of inauthentic biographies. It also allows the endurance of shame without being called upon by it or having to assure oneself of one's own difference.
To let these spaces of indeterminacy emerge, drawings and collages on paper and unstretched fabrics are needed. In these, underestimated passive forces such as the uncontrollable, the formless, and the silly coagulate. With this gestural vocabulary, Markues performs empathetic appropiations: literary texts, queer social history, and art historical quotations are lifted, blended, and delicately reworked to interrogate aspects bound yet suppressed within them. Assembled in atmospheric and immersive installations, the works liquefy the relationship of identity and origin to spoken word, writing, and abstract painting.