Fragments From Our Beautiful Future
Rebecca Raue & Steve Sabella
Contemporary Interventions in The Bumiller Collection #3
Opening: Thursday, May 18, 2017, 6 p.m.
The Bumiller Collection
Studio X-Berg
Naunynstraße 68, 10997 Berlin
www.the-bumiller-collection.com
Curated by House of Taswir
Opening Words
Fragments From Our Beautiful Future.
Rebecca Raue & Steve Sabella.
Contemporary Interventions in The Bumiller Collection #3
By A.S. Bruckstein Çoruh
May 18, 2017
A Film by Manu Bruckstein
May 18, 2017
The Bumiller Collection Studio X-Berg
Video Stills: Manu Bruckstein
The Bumiller Collection Studio X-Berg
On View May 19 to August 13, 2017
Fragments From our Beautiful Future
Rebecca Raue & Steve Sabella
Contemporary Interventions in The Bumiller Collection #3
Conceived by A.S. Bruckstein Çoruh
May 19 – August 13, 2017
“Being a dream within a dream … All existence is but an imagination within an imagination”
Ibn Arabi
In the 10th century, Arab thinkers conceived of a form of atomic time that has made a surprising comeback in contemporary artistic research. In contrast to the idea of linear time, the masters of Kalam maintained the radical freedom of every single ‘now.’ For the sake of God’s creative freedom, they demanded the dissociation of the present moment from the chains of cause and effect, and developed a performative, visual and temporal ‘cut-up’ theory. In the 20th century, this method recurred in the artworks of Surrealists and Dadaists, as well as in the works of Freud, Benjamin, and others.
In the exhibition Fragments From Our Beautiful Future, these ancient theories of ‘cut-up’ and Kalam give rise to a poetic space in which questions of temporality remain in a state of dreamlike suspension.
The exhibition presents the work of Jerusalem-born artist Steve Sabella and Berlin artist Rebecca Raue in a constellation with ancient chess pieces and Persian mirrors from the Bumiller Collection, dating from the 11th to the 17th century.
In his series 38 Days of Re-collection (2014) Steve Sabella imprints black & white photographs upon colored shards of paint, peeled off the walls of his birth house in the Old City of Jerusalem. The 15 fragments on show present a unique archive of personal memory of home and displacement, resembling ancient artifacts in an illusionary scene of archeological findings.
In her series Kalila wa Dimna (2017), presented for the first time at the Bumiller Collection, Rebecca Raue uses acryl and mixed media to intervene in 18th-century illuminated manuscripts printed on aluminum composite panels. The Syrian/ Egyptian folios depict animal fables from India that circulated in the Arabic-speaking sphere since the 10th century, and Raue’s collages reflect its world devised of utter poetry. She creates a dense layer of commentary on the colourful illustrations, all the while developing a visual language that draws inspiration from the Lettrist appeal of the underlying Arabic manuscripts. A sense of humor and anguish hold each other in place.
The exhibition is conceived by A.S. Bruckstein Çoruh.
The exhibition Fragments From Our Beautiful Future will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Kerber Verlag and edited by A.S. Bruckstein Çoruh. Contributing writers include Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh, Hubertus von Amelunxen, T.J. Demos, Nat Muller, Ella Shohat, Elliot R. Wolfson, Lorenz Korn, Almút Sh. Bruckstein, a.o.; with a preface by Jill J. Bumiller. With thanks to the designers Pierre Becker and Johanna Goldmann of Ta-Trung.
The exhibition also provides the framework for the first seminar “Contemporary Ancient” investigating the Nachleben of medieval antiquity as contemporary return of the repressed. In a facilitated public discussion, the forum sets out to explore diachronic views of ancient objects.
During the opening on May 18, 2017, The Bumiller Studio X-Berg is pleased to host ITINERANT INTERLUDE #68: a program of vocal performances curated specifically for Fragments From Our Beautiful Future. With Anna Clementi. The series ITINERANT INTERLUDES is organised by Laurie Schwartz and made possible with support from the inm — initiative neue musik berlin.
For more information or visuals of the exhibition: [email protected]