PRESS FILE
Natalie Czech
One can’t have it both ways and both ways is the
only way I want it.
Curated by Elfi Turpin.
A Critic’s Bouquet by Hili Perlson for Berlinde de Bruyckere, 2015.
Courtesy of Capitain Petzel, Berlin and Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf.
Exhibition from June 16 to September 18, 2016.
Opening Garden Party on Thursday, June 16 at 7.30 pm.
Press point on Wednesday, June 15 at 10 am, in the presence of Natalie Czech
and Elfi Turpin. Press shuttle from Art Basel at 9.30 am, appointment at 9.15 am
in front of Swissôtel le Plaza, Messeplatz 25.
Reservation and press contact: Richard Neyroud, [email protected]
T. +33 (0)3 89 08 82 59
One can’t
have it
both ways
and both
ways is the only
way I want it.
Ever since words and things stopped understanding each other, Don Quixote
has been wandering a world that does not recognise him. «A long thin
graphism, a letter that has just escaped from the open pages of a book»,
he has been scouring the world for signs of a resemblance to the books he
has emerged from. For Don Quixote, our sign-errant, is faced with quite a
problem: the literature of chivalry and the fanciful novels he has come out of
don’t resemble the world he’s moving through. Writing and things no longer
resemble each other. Words and things no longer understand each other. So
he sets about resembling the texts he knows, for he «must also furnish proof
and provide the indubitable sign that they are telling the truth, that they really
are the language of the world.» Thus his life path then becomes «a quest for
similitudes: the slightest analogies are pressed into service as dormant signs
that must be reawakened and made to speak once more.»
If I summon up this figure of the hero of the Same – at least as defined by
Michel Foucault – it is because Natalie Czech’s work finds a kinship in him,
so much does he depend on decipherment: not the decipherment of reality our
sign-errant would resort to, but decipherment of his representation. And to do
this – to reawaken the signs (the words) dormant in the text and the image,
Czech has developed different methods which have notably produced the
photographic series Hidden Poems (2010-2012), Poems by Repetition (20132016), Il pleut by Guillaume Apollinaire (2012), Voyelles (2013), Critic’s
Bouquets (2015) and most recently To [Icon], (2015-2016).
With Hidden Poems and Poems by Repetition Czech sets off in search of
poems which already exist but are concealed in the pages of magazines or
illustrated books, or on record sleeves, bags and digital reading devices:
poems by authors like E. E. Cummings, Frank O’Hara, Jack Kerouac, Robert
Lax, Khlebnikov and Gertrude Stein, which Czech notices, marks, re-edits
From A. R. Ammons, The Really Short Poems (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990).
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, 1994), p. 46.
Ibid., p. 47.
Ibid., p. 46.
and photographs, using the interplay of difference and repetition to set them
dialoguing with the texts, images and objects serving as supports for them.
And that’s how a text within a text produces an image.
Conversely, in the series Il pleut by Guillaume Apollinaire she invites writers
to fill the empty spaces between the words making up Apollinaire’s famous
calligramme. In doing so they embed the image of the rain of words on the
page in a text that she photographs against a coloured ground.
And that’s how a text that is an image produces another text that is another
image.
Similarly, with Critic’s Bouquets she asks writers to write a critique of an
exhibition in which each sentence is associated with a feeling taken from the
language of flowers. Thus each text enables her to compose a bouquet each
of whose flowers is associated with a sentence. The bouquet – photographed
in an outstretched hand – sends its message frontally to its recipient: in this
case, the viewer.
And that’s how an exhibition produces a text that produces a bouquet that
produces an image.
Lastly, with To [Icon] – literally «Making an Image» – Czech scrutinises the
computer icons that people our digital environment, pictograms she identifies
on the surfaces of clothes and fashion accessories: on trench coats, jeans,
overalls, shirts and backpacks that are themselves iconic. According to the
apps in question these desktop metaphors – houses, pens, dials – take
on different meanings that prompt different acts, and provide her with the
different words that will make up a new poem. Thus she finds the blank
page icon in the collar of the dress shirt she is photographing on the floor,
accompanied by a label bearing the new poem generated by a list of the
pictogram’s assorted meanings: a Draft, a Blank Page, a Preview, an Artboard
or just New.
And that’s how an image within an image produces a text then an image.
And that’s how you reawaken dormant signs.
And that’s how Natalie Czech writes.
Elfi Turpin, May 2016.
Natalie Czech
Paperdraft, 2015
Archival Pigment Print, resin form, glue
116,6 x 81 cm
Courtesy of Natalie Czech; Capitain Petzel, Berlin & Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf
Copyright VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Natalie Czech
Pen / Shirt (Working title), 2016
Archival Pigment Print with glued 3D form
113.5 x 77,3 cm
Courtesy of Natalie Czech; Capitain Petzel, Berlin & Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf
Copyright VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Natalie Czech
Jeans pocket / House (titre de travail), 2016
Archival Pigment Print with glued 3D form
135 x 81 cm
Courtesy of Natalie Czech; Capitain Petzel, Berlin & Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf
Copyright VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Natalie Czech
A Critic’s Bouquet by Rachel Valinsky for Camille Henrot, 2015
Archival pigment print
135 x 81 cm
Courtesy of Natalie Czech; Capitain Petzel, Berlin & Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf
Copyright VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Natalie Czech
Il pleut by Jacques Roubaud, 2014
Acrylic paint on C-Print
85 x 53 cm
Courtesy of Natalie Czech; Capitain Petzel, Berlin & Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf
Copyright VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
Natalie Czech
Born in à Neuss (Germany) in 1976. Lives and works in Berlin.
Natalie Czech is represented by Capitain Petzel, Berlin and Kadel Willborn,
Düsseldorf.
www.natalieczech.de
Solo exhibitions (selection)
2016
One can’t have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it, GB Agency, Paris, France.
2015
My Vocabulary Did This To Me, Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf, Germany.
2014
Il Pleut, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France.
Today I wrote nothing, Philara, Düsseldorf, Germany.
2013
I cannot repeat what I hear, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, Germany.
I cannot repeat what I hear, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany.
I cannot repeat what I hear, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
2012
I have nothing to say. Only to show., Ludlow 38, New York, USA.
Et moi aussi je suis peintre oder Why I am not a painter, NKV Nassauischer Kunstverein,
Wiesbaden, Germany.
Methodical Inquiries, Polistar, Istanbul, Turkey.
Collective exhibitions (selection)
2016
Sighs Trapped by Liars - Language in Art, KM - Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz, Austria.
... und eine Welt noch, Kunsthaus Hamburg, Germany.
2015
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library, Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum
für Gegenwart / Friends with Books, Berlin, Germany.
No Man’s Land, Rubell Family Collection, Floride, USA.
Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015, MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA.
Sagen und Zeigen, Kunstverein Bamberg, Germany.
A SPACE IS A SPACE IS A SPACE, DAZ - Deutsches Architektur Zentrum, Berlin, Germany.
Eugen Gomringer &, Bielefelder Kunstverein, Germany.
A Perfect Match, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany.
Ordne und finde mit, Philara, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Reloaded - Konkrete Positionen in der Gegenwartskunst und -literatur, Museum Weserburg,
Brême, Germany.
Words to be Looked at again, Kunstverein Leipzig, Germany.
The art center
Based in Altkirch and close to Switzerland (Basel) and Germany (Freiburg), CRAC Alsace is
a contemporary art center devoted to research and creation which through the conception of
exhibitions, publishing and specific activities of mediation, aims to support artistic production
by encouraging the encounters between the public, the artists and the artworks.
INFORMATION
Exhibition from June 16 to September 18, 2016.
Open from Tuesday to Friday, 10 am to 6 pm.
Saturday to Sunday, 2 to 6 pm.
Closed August 15-21.
Press contact: [email protected]
ACCESS
Train station Altkirch / Mulhouse - Mulhouse-Bâle-Freibourg Airport.
PARTNERSHIPS
CRAC Alsace is a member of d.c.a and Versant Est.
CRAC Alsace is supported by: Ville d’Altkirch, Conseil Départemental du Haut-Rhin, Conseil
Régional Alsace Champagne-Ardenne Lorraine, DRAC Alsace Champagne-Ardenne Lorraine
- Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication.
CRAC Alsace is also supported by Les Amis du CRAC Alsace; Club d’entreprises partenaires
du CRAC Alsace - CRAC 40: Cinéma Palace Lumière, Altkirch, Centre E. Leclerc, Altkirch, Optic
2000 Heimburger, Altkirch, Entreprise de peinture Mambré, Altkirch, Garage Fritsch Renault,
Altkirch, Café Darboven, Issenheim, Géant des Beaux-Arts, Saverne; Paris Art.
PRESS INFORMATION
TO MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR STAY,
WE CAN ARRANGE FOR TWO TOURS IN THE SAME DAY:
THE CRAC ALSACE & THE KUNSTHALLE MULHOUSE.
CURRENTLY AT KUNSTHALLE MULHOUSE :
Le Meilleur des mondes
Julie Beaufils, Elvire Bonduelle, Chai Siris
June 9 - August 21, 2016
Réception Art Basel : vendredi 17 juin à 19h / 7pm
Navette de Bâle à Mulhouse (AR)/ Shuttle from Basel to Mulhouse (Return)
Départ à 18h15 : Angle / Corner de Iseinerstrasse –Bleichestrasse – Retour : à 21h15
Chai Siris, Day for Night, video, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.
For its summer exhibition, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse is happy to welcome brand new projects from Julie
Beaufils, Elvire Bonduelle and Chai Siris.
Brought together at la Kunsthalle, works by Julie Beaufils, Elvire Bonduelle and Chai Siris will be
presented through three independent proposals, including paintings, videos and installations. The pieces
presented here are symptomatic of the singular universes of each of these three artists, and seem to be
linked by a common preoccupation: in a hyperconnected world, characterised by the desire for constant
awareness, which forms should we give to abandonment, idleness and laziness? How can dreams and
sleep paradoxically create a state of resistance within our social, cultural and even personal landscape?
This exhibition invites visitors to « let go » through an offbeat experience of contemplation and comfort
with Elvire Bonduelle, dreams and memory with Chai Siris, and disconnection with Julie Beaufils, under
the common title Le Meilleur des mondes .
Press contact: Clarisse Schwarb, [email protected]
T.+33 (0)3 69 77 66 28
La Kunsthalle - 16 rue de la Fonderie - F-68093 Mulhouse Cedex
T. + 33 (0) 3 69 66 77 47 - www.kunsthallemulhouse.com