A PERFORMATIVE INSTALLATION by DOLANBAY & NIKHIL CHOPRA
Meinblau – House of Arts Berlin // Pfefferberg Christinenstr. 18/19 // U2 Senefelderplatz www.meinblau.de
Sat-Mon 17th-19th December 2011 // 6pm – 6pm (48hours continuously)
Curated by TINA LANGE
Acting is a structural form imitating the world. Act is a space emptied of the factitious and the fictitious. It does not clash with authenticity but replaces coherences with the illusory world of the „truth“. A performance, however, exists by virtue of its execution in the live moment.
For two nights and two days, dolanbay and Nikhil Chopra, will continuously cohabit the Meinblau gallery to collaboratively create a performative installation. The artists enter into a time zone parallel to the mundane, experiencing empirical journeys and questioning the notion of activity and passivity in the mode of creation. The liminal experience allows an actual being in the experience. Their work constitutes a migration of performance as a time-based medium to a timeless one while simultaneously maintaining the real-time grammar of the performative act.
The entire space becomes a playground for drawing, painting, sculptural exercises and more, a kind of laboratory where the question of failure or success does not apply. The empty white cube becomes a site, a private as much as a public space filled by expectations and imaginations. It hosts a set of artistic practices, which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and the awareness of self-reflexivity.
The contemporary form of modernity is haunted by the occupancy of performativity, hence making a work involves the invention of a process of presentation. In this kind of process, the image is the act.
All are welcome at anytime day or night
This performance has been made possible by support from the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” at the Freie Universität Berlin http://textures-platform.com
dolanbay lives and works in Berlin and London, has studied 3D Design and Mixed Media Fine Art in the UK. He has exhibited and performed in numerous group shows in London, Istanbul and Berlin. His first solo show in 2009 in Meinblau in Berlin was titled “Heavy Paintings” and the solo show in 2011 in PG Art Gallery in Istanbul was titled „Heavy Paintings – Beyond Traces“. In 2011 he has started a series of performative installation projects called „Untitled Act“.
Via a three-fold focus on artists, art and life, dolanbay has been investigating art theories and coherent practices consecutive of the historical changes that shape contemporary art. Consequently, dolanbay has produced series of paintings and performative installations evolving a new aesthetics, negating the dichotomy of Performativity & Constativity, Actuality & Potentiality and Act & Acting within the mode of creation.
“Knowledge feels like snowflakes, melting away when falling into my palms, I end up with its traces, slowly disappearing into nothing. It always feels I am about to grasp it, if it’s not the warmth of the body eliminating its materiality. I end up with having something and / or nothing in the air to follow, hence seeking for knowledge becomes an endless
journey.”
dolanbay
Is a Mumbai-based artist, living and working in Berlin since March 2011 on a year-long Fellowship at the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” at the Freie Universität Berlin. During this time Nikhil has been running a performance-space in Wedding called Grüntaler 9, where he also invites other artistic collaborations.
He studied Fine Arts in India and USA. Nikhil Chopra has been working in the medium of live art since 2002. He works at the boundaries between theatre, performance art, painting, photography and installation. He devises fictional characters that draw on his own personal history and memory. He inhabits these characters in largely improvised performances that last up to few days.
He was invited to the KHOJ International Performance Art Residency in Delhi and Kashmir in 2007, and to the Kunstenfestivaldesarts’ Residence & Reflection project in Brussels in 2009. He has performed at the Serpentine Gallery in London (2008), the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo (2009), Yokohama Triennale and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2008), Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels (2009), at Performa in the New Museum in New York (2009), at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2010), at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), during the Manchester International Festival (2009) and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2011).
Tina Lange
Tina has studied Theatre and Performance Studies in Leipzig, Paris and Berlin. Currently she is pursuing her PhD on Contemporary Performance Art as a research associate at the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” at the Freie Universität Berlin. She has been engaged in Nikhil Chopra and dolanbay’s work since 2008.
