PRESS RELEASE
opening: 24. 1. 2007 v 18:00 hodin
exhibition days: 25.1. - 18. 2. 2007
The exhibition 'Bankrot' (which translates as 'Bankruptcy') showcases the work of Ivan Civic and Herma Auguste Wittstock. It also constitutes the climax of these artists' FUTURA-sponsored Karlin Studios residency in November last year-the first year of the residencies assigned for German artists which FUTURA plans to run on an annual basis under the name resiDEnce.
Young performer Ivan Civic (who was born in 1977 and who lives and works in Berlin) is a graduate of the studios of Marina Abramovic at Braunschweig School of Art. He has participated in a number of exhibitions in a series of prestigious institutions (including P.S.1 in New York, the Irish Museum for Modern Art in Dublin, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and the Venice Biennale). In a non-stop three-hour performance entitled 'Want it, get it, fake it!', he becomes the hero of a never-ending computer game-entering into an exhausting battle with himself in which the physical and psychological obstructions he overcomes represent the linearity and verticality of the career of an individual in the contemporary art world.
Herma Auguste Wittstock (born in 1977 and living and working in Berlin) is also a graduate of the studios of Marina Abramovic at Braunschweig School of Art. In her performances she projects her emotional perceptions of a particular place and situation with intense corporeal relish, often exploiting extreme positions connected with the media of expression used by her teacher's generation. For her Karlin Studios work, she prepared two projects reacting to her own perceptions and experiences both of Prague and of this specific exhibition space. In her own literally embodied poetry she will present one live and one documented performance expressing her perception of Prague as a 'fairy tale', other-timely phenomenon which is yet a paralyzing expression of beauty.
The ResiDEnce project has been made possible thanks to the support of the Czech-German Fund for the Future and of the Goethe Institute in Prague.