Moving on Motion

On Friday, July 7, from 6 to 9 pm, Galerie Thomas Schulte will open its first exhibition in its new location at Charlottenstraße 24 in Berlin Mitte. Entitled Moving On: Motion, this exhibition - itself an allusion to the gallery’s own relocation - associatively picks up the theme of moving and motion, illustrating it with several outstanding artistic positions.

"Motion" can be defined in multiple ways on numerous levels. We understand it not just as physical movement from point A to point B. Motion is also intellectual motion, and it can take place consciously or unconsciously. Our own state of being moved or unmoved influences our perception and the truth of our statements, and at the same time immobility or the suppression of motion can present significant intellectual, physical, and social dangers.

Rodney Graham’s famous work Halcion Sleep shows the artist lying on the backseat of a car after having taken a strong sleeping pill. Sleeping, he is moved from one bed into another. All mental control of his movement in the actual physical world is eliminated. The movement takes place physically, but not in his mind. Do we control our movements, or what we consider to be our motions?

Bas Jan Ader performs the motion that transforms a three-color bouquet of flowers into three single-color bouquets, and then back into one three-colored bouquet. Among other things, he has found a metaphor here for our daily activity and our aspiration to order reality. An intellectual motion which, observed from a higher level, might be without any real value; a certain correspondence and response to this is the endless series of unlikely yet planned coincidences in Fischli & Weiss’ chain-reaction.

Mark Lombardi in turn records a worldwide system of finance criminality and the connections linking international power cartels - movements that dominate and influence us without our knowledge.

And in his sketchbook of 21 drawings, Gordon Matta-Clark expresses the dance-like energy that is such a important factor in all his creative activity and thought.

Moving on Motion

mit Bas Jan Ader, Fischli / Weiss, Rodney Graham, Mark Lombardi, Gordon Matta-Clark, Lawrence Weiner