October 11, 2017, 3 pm
Many thanks to the gallery manager Meggie Jaworski introducing our participants to the gallery concept and guiding us through the exhibition “COME OUT (TO SHOW THEM)” by Caroline Kryzecki at SEXAUER Gallery.
Exhibition Dates: September 09 – October 21, 2017
Location: SEXAUER Gallery
Opening Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 1 – 6 PM
Address: Streustraße 90, 13086 Berlin
“JPS: Caroline, you are well-known for your ballpoint pen drawings. They are usually up to 270 × 190 cm and consist of thousands of lines drawn with a ruler. This time you have made a floor piece of 15 × 15 m. Why?
CK: I see it as a huge drawing. The gallery’s gray floor, which is not visible at the moment, is very dominant otherwise. It is by far the largest surface in the gallery, much larger than the walls. The physical experience is important to me. The floor piece changes the perception of the space as a whole. The walls and even the ceiling have a pink hue from the red floor’s reflection. It is strenuous to expose oneself to it, one might get dizzy. I placed the grid of lines at a slight angle and it does not cover the whole floor. The silkscreen prints do, but not the grid. This is a reference to the works on paper, the drawing is practically laid out on in the hall.
JPS: You have put together over seven hundred silkscreen prints for this piece, a very elaborate process. Why silkscreen printing?
CK: My works are always handmade and thereby analog. Even if they sometimes seem to be machine-made or computer-generated. Differently than my works on paper, I used grid-based modules for this floor piece that basically function like tapestry. As a result the structure is constructed very evenly. To retain that human imprecision that is quintessential to my drawings, I decided to use silkscreen printing for the floor piece. Silkscreen is an analog printing technique and each leaf looks a little different. The template for the prints is also drawn and made by hand. There are little errors and irregularities that make the piece alive. These give the work something human, something uncontrollable. I am convinced that this is something the viewer perceives, albeit unconsciously. Besides, silkscreen printing demands strength. It is a bodily challenge, similar to the large-scale ballpoint pen drawings, especially due to the large number of prints it took to complete the floor piece. This way the work resembles an unique drawing rather than a typical print. An original emerging from reproductions.
JPS: The title of the exhibition: Come out (to show them). What is it that you refer to?
CK: It is the title of a Steve Reich composition. In this work, Reich uses multiple tape recorders and always the same sequence of words: “come out to show them”. The quote comes from the statement of a young man who was subjected to police brutality. It is continuously repeated. The slightly differing speeds of the devices result in a barely audible scintillation. Just like the drawings and the floor piece. This method of Reich, phase shifting and minimal deviations of a recurring constant, is very familiar to me. My ballpoint pen drawings are inspired by everyday photos I take of recurring structures. Construction components stacked on each other, façades, fences, walls.” (Text excerpt from an interview between Jan-Philipp Sexauer & Caroline Kryzecki by courtesy of SEXAUER Gallery)
More information on the SEXAUER Gallery Website.
