Exhibition
The point of departure in Matti Braun’s exhibition, which is comprised of three installations, lies in his interest in the shifts and intersections between different cultures and their effects upon political and societal processes. In each of these three works he uses mirror-glass, which he employs in different ways.
In Edo, the artist researched the interest that European intellectuals and artists had in the cultural and societal achievements of historical Japan at the outset of the twentieth century. The title Edo, referring to Tokyo’s former name, also reflects a melancholic disposition in dealing with the history of other cultures. In contrast to the revolutionary approach taken towards one’s own culture, here concepts of conservation and rescue bathe the scholarly and artistic interest in a post-colonial light.
In Ghor, Matti Braun focuses his attention on the biography of Leopold Sedar Seghor, State President of Senegal from 1960 to 1980. Using the example of Senghor’s life history and political career, Braun demonstrates the politician’s highly problematical, but ultimately successful, shifting between different cultures.
In his combined mural and spatial installation Bali Braun investigates a journey to the South Seas undertaken by F. W. Murnau towards the end of the 1920s; his friendWalter Spies lived in Bali and had, with his letters, nourished the filmmaker’s hopes of, and yearnings for, a Life in Paradise. The exchange of letters between the two friends forms the backdrop to this research project into the cultural and social conditions extant in Europe and America of that time and the resultant projections of a new and different world.
Matti Braun’s installation presents no technically confected exhibition of documentary research data. Instead, the artist uses the material as a basis for the visual presentation of his own experiences. The exhibition thus proffers an attempt to compress and newly open up a highly complex discourse through reduction and sculptural translation.
Curated by Martin Janda
