Summer School as School
3- 18 July, 2016
Public Program
Friday, 8 July 2016 at 19:00
Felix Gmelin
Venue: Boxing Club
Mark Isaku St. Prishtina
Republic of Kosovo
Felix Gmelin, born in Heidelberg in the early 60s, shares his time in between Sarajevo, Oslo and Stockholm. He uses media including painting, performance and video as means of investigating political imagery and language, utopia and dogmatism, while comparing contemporary political activism with that of times past. His method of questioning the aestheticisation of politics through historical comparison discusses how radical gestures have now turned into fashion, and whether art can be useful to present-day society. His work is based on our shared memory, and uses autobiographical family stories and private documentary material to demonstrate how every story overlies another.
Solo exhibitions
2014 Kunst og Ukunst: Vidkun Quisling looking at Pussy Riot, Kunstnernas Hus / ONO Gallery. 2013 Nations are stranger than People, Charlama Depot, Center Skenderija, Sarajevo (BA). Utiphobia, Krognoshuset, Lund (SE). 2012 T is for Toe, Nordenhake, Stockholm. 2011 Manifesto, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam. Baby (revolution) comeback, Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina, Kosova.
Group exhibitions
2015 Picasso in der Kunst der Gegenwart, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg. Tirana Open 1, Pallati i Kongreseve, Tirana, Albania. 2014 Progress and Hygiene, Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warszawa (PL). 2013 Version Control, Arnolfini, Bristol (GB). 2012 The evolution must be made little by little, part 1: difference and repetition, Galeria Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo (BR). 2007 History will repeat Itself – strategies of re-enactment in contemporary art, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund (DE). 52nd Venice Biennale. 2006 Of mice and men, 4th Berlin Biennial.
Publications
Picasso in Contemporary Art: Deichtorhallen, Hamburg by Dirk Luckow, Michael Fitzgerald, Uwe Fleckner and Hanne Loreck, March 2015
Nordic Contemporary: Art from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, edited by Hossein Amirsadeghi, TransGlobe Publishing and Thames & Hudson, May 2014
Progress and Hygiene, ed. Anda Rottenburg, Zacheta — Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Nov.2014 ISBN 978-83-935999-2-9
Ausstellung "Punctum" in Salzburg, Koteletten gegen den Gesichtsverlust, Paul Katzenberger, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 13. August 2014 http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/ausstellung-punctum-in-salzburg-koteletten-gegen-den-gesichtsverlust-1.2077486
Dario Gamboni, “Titel”, in: Kerry Brougher and Russell Ferguson (eds.), Damage Control: Art and Destruction since 1950, exh. cat. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, Prestel, New York 2013.
Daniel Birnbaum, “We live in different times”, in: Strangers: Between Europe and Asia, VII Shiryaevo Biennale of Contemporary Art, exh. cat., Issuu.com 2012
www.nordenhake.com
www.vilmagold.com
www.annetgelink.com