Hannah Black, Rindon Johnson, Mire Lee, Eoghan Ryan
Kunstverein Freiburg
27 Mar–16 May 2021

Press appointments
from Thu, 25 Mar 2021

Encounters, contact and coalition are processes of contamination. Distinct entities collide and change. A substance, being or community is tainted, corrupted or afflicted by something else. Purity is an illusion. Phantasms of purity characterise the ventures of European Western modernity. They reside in, but aren’t limited to epistemological pursuits, the striving for stable categories, precise boundaries and clear-cut identities. These imaginaries tend to be centred on a rational, self-determined subject – all too often straight, white and male – who claims to embody the human in its purest form.

The works in the exhibition Contamination question what is defined as human. They undermine the idea of a self-contained individual that asserts its privileged position in opposition to the other. Living beings are inevitably entangled through innumerable relationships of collaboration and contamination; they are constructed by their environments and the very boundaries of their bodies are permeable themselves. They are bound into metabolic processes and interdependencies, sometimes toxic systems that have been and continue to be shaped by exploitation and violence, by forms of consumption and cannibalism, by mechanisms of colonialism and racism. 

The concept of contamination serves as a loose conceptual framework for the exhibition, bringing together works and new commissions by four artists, which in turn proceed from this framework on paths that occasionally cross. The exhibition is not intended as a commentary on the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, it more generally pursues the conflictual processes and dynamics that exist between contamination and the politics of purity.

Over the course of the exhibition, a two-part clay sculpture by Hannah Black will cannibalise itself piece by piece. Her video Aeter (Jack) portrays a young, white man who talks about his obsessive nail-biting, whilst the video Aeter (Sam) gives an account of a bone transplant. Placed in dialogue with Black’s selection of six quotes from a variety of sources – including Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropófago (1928) – Black's works refer to the ways in which colonialism and racism are intertwined with European-Western myths and practices of cannibalism and consumption.

Mire Lee's kinetic objects destabilise boundaries – the boundaries of the body and other divisions between subject and environment, as well as boundaries between nature and culture, between living beings and machines. There are creatures whose physical integrity has been compromised, leaking fluids, twitching mechanically; whose insides appear to be turned outwards. Lee links her artistic practise to vorarephilia, a sexual fetish in which one desires to swallow another being whole, or be swallowed whole oneself. Lee is producing a new sculpture for the exhibition, which will lodge itself in the clean exhibition hall like a parasite and spread a slimy substance across the floor.

The video installation Truly Rural by Eoghan Ryan combines impressions of carnival celebrations in a community in rural Hesse with documentary recordings of the BSE crisis in Great Britain. It is no secret that one of the causes of the so-called ‘mad cow disease’ was the practice of feeding bovine meat and bonemeal back to cattle in order to maximise profit. The video superimposes images of amassing crowds with scenes of control and violence. An atmosphere of imminent social unrest and disgust conjures up fears of dissolution and fantasies of homogeneity. Ryan's video poses questions about the psychosocial dynamics behind the rise of right-wing populist and (neo-)fascist movements.

The exhibited works by Rindon Johnson reflect dependencies and entanglements between humans, living beings and ecosystems, ranging from submission and consumption to intimacy and mutual affection. Tanned cattle hides, which have been exposed to the elements for several months on the roof of the Kunstverein, refer to the skin as an organ and boundary of the body. At the same time, they address the utilisation of ‘livestock’, which draws parallels to racist conditions of exploitation. A virtual reality work similarly questions the way in which the objectification, destruction and exploitation of living beings and ecosystems is taken for granted. The viewer drifts upstream through a dream landscape as two-headed cows collide and clump into a monstrous knot before their eyes. The virtual reality game Meat Growers: A Love Story is set in a post-capitalist future where meat-producing crops are grown for food. However, it turns out that these plants are sentient and capable of emotion. Johnson is also producing a new video work for the exhibition. Using the interactions of strange aquatic beings, the video visualises moments of touch and desire, which offer a prompt to re-imagine our relationships with other living beings.

Artists

Hanna Black (* 1981, Great Britain), living in New York. Solo (SE) and group exhibitions (GE) (selection): Ruin/Rien, Arcadia Missa, London, 2020, (SE); Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020, (GE); Beginning, End, Note, Performance Space, New York, 2019, (SE); Leaving the Echo Chamber, Sharjah Biennial 14, Sharjah, 2019, (GE); Dede, Eberhard, Phantom, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, 2019, (SE).

Rindon Johnson (* 1990, United States), living in Berlin. Solo and group exhibitions (selection): Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2021 (SE); Law of Large Numbers: Our Bodies, Sculpture Centre, New York, 2021 (SE); Circumscribe, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, 2019 (SE).

Mire Lee (* 1988, Korea), living in Amsterdam. Solo and group exhibitions (selection): Carriers, Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2020, (SE); Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, 15th Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, 2019, (GE); War Isn’t Won by Soldiers It’s Won by Sentiment, Insa Art Space, Seoul, 2014, (SE).

Eoghan Ryan (* 1987, Ireland), living in Amsterdam. Solo and group exhibitions (selection): Truly Rural, Kunstfort Vijfhuizen, Vijfhuizen, 2020, (performance); Juvenilia, Center, Berlin, 2019, (GE); Cut It Off At The Trunk, Rowing Project, London, 2017, (SE); Oh Wickend Flesh!, South London Gallery, London, 2013, (SE).

Programme

Thu, 22 Apr 2021, 7 pm
Curator’s tour with Heinrich Dietz

Thu, 29 Apr 2021, 7 pm
Guided tour with Theresa Rößler

Tue, 4 May 2021, 7 pm
Purity and Contamination
Talk with Alexis Shotwell (online)

Sat, 8 May 2021, 2–5 pm
„Ich bin keine Rassist*in! Oder?“
Workshop with Rebecca Renz and Jordan Schwarz of „Dear White People … “
(registration required)

Kunstverein Freiburg
Dreisamstr. 21
79098 Freiburg