Martin Kohout

ON SCREEN: SLIDES, a Film by Martin Kohout, AQNB 2017
and many other surprises.

Tursday 20. September 2018 * 20.30 Uhr

For anyone familiar with Kohout or his work, he isn’t one for simplification. Active since graduating Frankfurt’s Städelschule in 2013 (film school before that) the Prague-born artist has been making highly conceptual work, with a strong individual aesthetic that’s nonetheless hard to pinpoint. His execution is very deliberate, and his ideas are particularly detailed. They’re backed by such a breadth of knowledge and information that they refuse the impulse to give simple answers, generalisations, for what are very complex systems. “I am often interested in these things that we consider rules or structures that we follow and so on, and then definitely the tactics that people develop to operate within them, or derail them, detour, turn them upside down or against themselves,” says Kohout about the concerns of his practice-at-large.

“For a long time I used to say that my work is focused on the habits that come with technologies and how these habits reshape our perception of both the technologies that came with it and and the habits that they introduced. Now, the idea of dating, for example, is so different and the whole idea of relationships for the younger generation – not mine, necessarily, but the younger one – is people feel like if their relationship doesn’t work, you just go and look for someone else because you can just swipe some more and you have so many options. And when Facebook was introduced and people would get used to sending friend requests to each other, I felt like even in real life people started having a different attitude when being introduced to other people and introducing themselves. Those were effects that would not be immediately there but they would reshape the thing which they were supposed to update or build on top so it was this interesting loop.”

Extract from: The networked organism Martin Kohout on the clash of circadian rhythm with mechanic expectations for his Night Shifts project. Jean Kay, 13 January 2018. Published on http://www.aqnb.com

MARTIN KOHOUT is a Berlin-based, Czech-born visual artist. He holds a MA from the Städelschule, Frankfurt, and a BA from the Film Academy FAMU, Prague. Kohout is represented by both Exile, Berlin, and Polansky Gallery, Prague. He mostly works in the medium of video, film, installation and objects made of various materials from pottery to fabrics. He has presented in solo and groups shows in Berlin, London, Brussels, Paris, Prague, Warsaw, Tokyo, Beijing, New York, and more. In 2011 Kohout established TLTRPreß, a publishing house for selected authors and a space to present the breadth of his own research efforts in the form of edited collections such as Sleep Cures Sleepiness (2014) and Linear Manual (2012). He has also written a game book Puffy Logic Grip (2017). Kohout is the recipient of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award 2017, a prize in recognition and support of young Czech artists. Kohout is also teaching at Prague’s AAAD arts academy, co-running the Studio of Photography together with the artist Aleksandra Vajd.

KIN*K takes places each month at B.L.O. ATELIERS in Lichtenberg and is curated by Irina Novarese & Marco Pezzotta, with the great support of BLO-Ateliers LockKunst e.V. and all the invited artists. KIN*K Beamerübernahme mit Kunst, with the 2018’s Program is kindly funded by Bezirkskulturfonds Lichtenberg, Berlin.

Free entrance and free pop corn!

BLO-Ateliers
Kaskelstr. 55
10317 Berlin