Husslehof is pleased to invite you to the first exhibition in 2016, with Amy Ball, born 1987 in Canada, Sathit Sattarasart, born 1979 in Thailand and Mark Walker, born 1988 in the UK. The group show "FUNNY THE plants" is the first in a series of exhibitions with a focus on international collaborations.
FUNNY THE plants is an ad-libbed shot at individual senses of humor - an exercise in whim, instinct and coincidence. It may seem for the light of heart, but perhaps that's worth having a go at - trusting your gut, so to say, and letting humor seep through at the end of what has seemed a very-long-winter. It's a bit the practice of saying “jah” instead of “nein”, to each other and to ones self - heavy on the art therapy, maybe, or why not all just take it a bit easy.
Opening 16.04.2016, 7 pm
Exhibition 16.04. - 19.04.2016
Opening Hours 16.04. - 19.04.2016, 12 - 4 pm
as well as by appointment
AMY BALL
by Mark Walker:
Amy Ball is an indy artist from the gold mining town, the city of Dawson, in the Yukon. Where, some summers, she retreats to her exLaundry cabin to hang out in the Wilderness. Sometime I am not sure if Amy Ball is real. What she is and what she does is very familiar but somehow so close she is completely unconnected. In Amy Balls work the abstracted character, becomes more visible, but still keep a distance. In ‘Thunder bang, bang lightning’ She is photographers from behind at the seat of a full drum kit, in front of which is vast green plane stretching out forever, with a raging thunderstorm. A total dreamscape with lightening filling the bloody sky. Another report stated that she was a very post human child. With reality emerging, slowly, steadily, like a wine-stain working its way through wool, AMY BALL deals with this in a grinding, passive aggressive and down to earth work, she presented a mop, inscribed with the words ‘Don't let the bastards grind you down.’ turning the cleanly domestic activity into a fuck you to the man.
SATHIT SATTARASART
by Amy Ball:
It’s difficult for me to say, if washing your hands with a bar of soap, etched with stencilled letters spelling out “d i s s a p o i n t m e n t”, months after the exhibition has already ended, as the soap gets dirtier and dirtier and the letters less and less legible, is funny, or sad or self deprecating; but, maybe it’s all of those things, or some combination of them. And maybe, that’s where Sathit Sattarasart exercises his humour. Take his recent show at 1822 - there is absolutely nothing Funny about it at first glance, i.e - you’d be lying to me if you said you walked down Fahrgasse and lol’d to yourself the way you might if you were a bit hungover and making your way home reviewing the events which lead up to you feeling the way you felt right then. But then again, if Sathit really is doing, as his long time collaborator, Julia Schwadron, (they sometimes pretend to be each other) says he is doing: “deconstruct(ing), while simultaneously reconstructing, the language, the terms…the stakes and their use-values; poking with a gentle prod…at what is most violent or tragic or corrupt by building a quiet pile of elements, ingredients and ideas…in order to undermine their own context…” then maybe, you might not lol to yourself but instead keep in a sort of light chuckle, visible only to passerby’s by, by a slight change in your grin. Maybe, a clean and simple plywood table (size wise like a regular north american dining room table) with white light emanating from under it, in a staunch white room with a big store front window on a wacky little street with antique furniture shops and designer goods you can’t afford, commercial galleries you don’t understand the clientele of, and up-and coming hipster hot spots - is doing exactly that: “poking with a gentle prod”. And for me, if I think of it that way, it is kind of funny…
MARK WALKER
by Sathit Sattarasart:
Mark Walker seriously operates in a world of humour. The things he makes, make sense in a way that I would question myself twice or maybe thrice, as if I took a wrong turn off the Autobahn. My experience of Mr. Walker’s art objects is like walking along the sea shore during magic hour, and suddenly finding a whale that’s been hit by a car and then realizing that it’s not an ocean, its a lake. Maybe I really took a wrong turn. Mr. Walker finds himself working between languages and objects. Language plays a big part in his works, all the way from the titles to the recognition of objects. His titles can be somewhat melancholic, except the one that he accidentally butt-typed with his phone. It is the greatest butt-typed title ever created (if I could butt type this intro about Mr. Walkers work as well as his butt-typed title, I would do it). Then everything comes together - weird words followed by his absurd and odd objects - creating a good twisted contrast. Mr. Walker leads us somewhere with his work and unexpectedly we end up somewhere else with him; like his broken speaker that failed as a bookshelf and barely has the function of a light which works like a heater without producing heat. Once he said that his joke has already petered out, but that seems not to be the case. Currently Mark, as we call him, grows his bushy beard, and lives and works in Berlin. Sometimes he is spotted in Frankfurt am Main setting free ceramic monkeys from souvenir shops.
HUSSLEHOF
Koblenzer Strasse 12
60327 Frankfurt am Main
0049 173 411 5575
mail@husslehof.org
www.husslehof.org
