Galerie
der Villa launches its 2019 program with an exhibition series this April
entitled BELLEALLIANCE. It will be held at Galerie der Villa’s new location on
the lively Bellealliancestrasse 35 in Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel district and
will address the topic of interpersonal relationships and alliances.
In each of four successive exhibitions, two artists (a guest artist and an
artist from Galerie der Villa) will jointly develop a concept that will promote
contact and networking with the vibrant and diverse surrounding neighborhood
consisting of private households, numerous small shops and projects, and
establishments such as cafés, restaurants, hairdressing salons, design
agencies, and many others, as well as seeking their contributions to the
endeavor.
A closing exhibition is planned at a larger venue at the end of 2019. It will
feature the presentations developed by the individual artist duos, together
with other guest artists and artists from Galerie der Villa, as well as include
the involvement of the neighborhood and gallery visitors.
The installation series will kick off with the
first duo consisting of the
Hamburg-based French conceptual artist
Youssef Tabti and
the Hamburg installation artist
Silke Marohn, who will open with their joint
project entitled
WATERLOO
on Thursday, April 4 at 6 p.m. With an eye to the past [1] and
inspired by the historical Bellealliance inn, which served as headquarters for
Napoleon Bonaparte during the Battle of Waterloo, the artistic duo has staged a
multimedia installation of walk-in sculptures and artifacts that oscillates
between fiction and reality. Guests are also invited to sample a Waterloo
cocktail (alcohol-free cocktails are also available). Further information will
follow soon.
Youssef Tabti’s interdisciplinary
and frequently collaborative projects revolve around social processes. Influenced
by his personal background, his work includes sound, space, and video
installations, as well as photography, texts, and performative events. He
thereby uses the research methods of mapping and documentation to stimulate
critical reflection on geopolitical, post-colonial, and societal upheavals in
history.
The most recent projects by Youssef Tabti were held at the Hamburger
Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin and at the Goethe-Institut Beirut
in Lebanon in 2018.
The draftsman and architect
Silke Marohn, who in recent years has been
intensely engaged in painting, combines installation and presentation spaces
into jarring and disconcerting spatial situations. These locations are bathed
in ambivalence – fluctuating between the imaginary décor of a supposed
room and a modeled walk-in sculpture. By employing a wide variety of materials,
Silke Marohn modularly integrates individual objects into her scenarios and calls
into question the functionality, application, and exhibition space of art.
Major projects by
Silke Marohn took place at
Oberpostdirektion and
Affenfaust
Galerie in Hamburg in 2016 and at
Kunsthaus Hamburg in 2014.
Together, through the WATERLOO exhibition, they have forged an alliance
in which they refer to each other—both mutually and individually—on the topics of
war and power in the first room, war and eroticism in the corridor, and war and the heroes in the rear room.
They thus address topics of historical and current relevance, while reflecting
on the relationships between their artistic works, i.e. of their alliance, at
the same time
How does confronting these topic clusters related to war affect us—topics
that are bitter realities and are actually not so far removed from us? What
does it do to those of us who live here in our bubble, our gentrified
neighborhoods? Does this allow us to broaden our horizons, to rethink how we
deal with other topics or our own opinions? What topics could these be? What does
it all come down to?
What you see here is the result of a process of mutual referencing between
Marohn and Tabti over the past few weeks. Similar to Youssef Tabti’s enthusiasm
of Silke Marohn’s previous work and how he refers to it from his perspective through
his work, Silke Marohn responds to Youssef Tabti’s position through her own artwork
and texts, which will be read aloud by actress Christine Kutschera shortly. To
find out how the details of how this worked out, you can talk to them tonight
or you can come next week to the discussion with the artists on Thursday at 7
p.m., to one of the guided tours, or to the finissage.
——————————————————
[1]
Belle-Alliance [bɛl a.ljɑ̃s] (französisch „Schöne Verbindung“ oder „Schönes
Bündnis“) ist die Bezeichnung eines ehemaligen Gasthauses, das Napoleon
Bonaparte in der Schlacht bei Waterloo als Hauptquartier gedient hat. In der
preußischen und deutschen Geschichtsschreibung wurde bis ins 20. Jahrhundert
auch der Name „Schlacht bei“ oder „von Belle Alliance“ verwendet. Dies ist auf
Blücher zurückzuführen, der schon in seinen Berichten am 21. Juni 1815 diesen
Namen benutzte.
Man findet das Gebäude heute an der N 5 unweit von Plancenoit. An dieser
Straße von Paris nach Brüssel steht es an einer Kreuzung mitten auf dem
Schlachtfeld von Waterloo. Das Gebäude soll heute als Diskothek dienen, hat
aber seinen historischen Namen nicht verloren. Diesen Namen hatte die Kneipe
1765 anlässlich der Heirat eines jungen Knechts mit einer alten Witwe erhalten.
(Seite „Belle-Alliance“. In: Wikipedia, Die freie Enzyklopädie.
Bearbeitungsstand: 4. Dezember 2018, 11:56 UTC. URL:
https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Belle-Alliance&oldid=183394141
(Abgerufen: 4. März 2019, 18:02 UTC)
[1] La
Belle Alliance is an inn situated a few miles south of Brussels in Belgium,
chiefly remembered for its significance in the aftermath of the Battle of
Waterloo (18 June 1815).
According to J.B. Romberg
who published an account of the locations around Brussels in 1820, originally
La Belle Alliance consisted of three houses, one of which was a tavern, that
now bears the name, and two adjacent houses. Some time before the Battle of
Waterloo, the publican of the tavern died, and his widow married the occupier
of Trimotion, the farmhouse opposite; but losing him in a short time
afterwards, she consoled herself by taking for her third husband a peasant who
lived a house close by (now known as Decoster’s house). However, death again
interrupted her happiness, when she once more embraced the married state it was
to marry the young new landlord tavern in 1765; from which time it obtained the
title it now bears. The original name having fallen into disuse, the building
serves as a club—Le Retro—today (“Belle-Alliance.” In: Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Belle_Alliance
(visited: March 11, 2019, 08:02 UTC) and URL: https:// https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle-Alliance (visited: March
4, 2019, 18:02 UTC) and https://www.welt.de/kultur/history/article13652918/Aus-Waterloo-waere-fast-Belle-Alliance-geworden.html
