Barbara Weiss

Heike Baranowsky - KviKvi

10 Mar - 26 Apr 2015

Still from KviKvi, 2015, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
Still from KviKvi, 2015, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
Press Release


Heike Baranowsky
KviKvi

March 10 – April 26, 2015
Opening Saturday, March 7, 6–9 pm
Gallery hours, Tue–Sat, 11 am – 6 pm



For almost 20 years, Heike Baranowsky has explored the most diverse of urban and natural landscapes, employing novel means and a calm, analytical, perspective. On the occasion of her 6th solo exhibition at Galerie Barbara Weiss the artist shows three new works under the title KviKvi, which draw upon Icelandic nature.

The Icelandic landscape at the foot of the Eyjafjallajökull vulcano, responsible for the near standstill of European aviation in 2010, as well as a 100-year old, brick-built pool built into the rock, form the stage for KviKvi, 2014. Ten women singing together in a choir left their daily routine behind for a week in July 2014 to develop a project together with the artists Heike Baranowsky and Ursula Rogg, and choirmaster Gróa Hreinsdottir. The only predetermined detail was that there would be singing, and the singing would take place within the pool. KviKvi, a traditional Icelandic lullaby, served as the point of departure and as the basis for a range of improvisations in movements and singing which took place during those seven days. Collage-like performance and vocals coalesce with the nature and open into Baranowsky ́s extensive, 4-channel video installation.
This singing runs like a thread through the entire piece. Humming and different singing exercises gradually accrue to a musical canon during the course of the film, created by Baranowsky by superimposing and shifting two soundtracks. Finally, the sound unifies in a cacophony.

In Crater (Kerið), 2015, Baranowsky encircled the crater edge of the Kerið volcano, located in southern Iceland, for almost three hours, while taking more than 2000 photographs. These images were subsequently arranged in chronological order, creating a stop-motion effect. Finally, the animation was transferred to 16mm, seamlessly looped and projected upside-down. Shapes are inverted – a concave becomes a convex and vice versa.


Contributors Volker Gläser, Thomas Meier, Titus Maderlechner und Ursula Rogg
Kindly supported by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg
 

Tags: Heike Baranowsky