DURING WAR NO PICTURES ON LINE - ASK FOR IT
MAY 4 - JUNE 11, 2024
SHADOW CABINET REQUIEM - press release and images when peace in returnss
ALEKSANDRA / TINA BEPPERLING / CEDRIC BALLESTEROS / AL JARRI / COMMEDESMARXISTS / RAINER GANAHL / PENG XIANGHENG / MOSE ERNEST TOLLIVER / EMILY WISNIEWSKY /
press release
SHADOW CABINET - REQUIEM
Who is above the law?
The shadow cabinet is a British government institution that is made to scrutinize the actual ruling party’s work operating a bit like an opposition party. Various countries, various institutions, various ways to govern - all countries have one thing in common: Laws are laws but the main question is: Who is above the law ? Who controls the law? Who governs what can be law and what not and by what majority. Who is allowed to participate in the process of governance. Women, or only men with possessions, or only people who have never been convicted or people of just one color?
In times of major actual wars and impeding wars with major nuclear annihilation consequences (according to Trump and Putin) — the current Middle East War, the Russian-Ukrainian War, some African wars that are the consequences of genocidal politics associated with bad colonial policies to mention only a few - it is not a waste of time to google the ten oldest modern democracies. We learn something about the current political situation in the oldest modern democracy ignoring the Greek experiments in democratic governance. Number one are the United States and number 10 is Austria, hence June 21, 1788 and October 1, 1920. The Austrian beginnings came at the end of WW I and were disrupted by World War II - which was the biggest war to date and came with the industrial destruction of Jewish life in what is called Shoa. Daumenlutscher Berlin has artists of the United States, China, Poland, Germany and Austria and hopes to contribute to peace and not more division.
ALEKSANDRA is a multidisciplinary artist who now supports herself working in an archive. She has had a hard time with people who overstepped their red lines. She is also a model for COMMEDESMARXISTS and is the local curator of the Berlin Based gallery. Her drawings record feelings and how to deal with stress in a world where men overstepped their boundaries - a situation that unfortunately repeated a bit.
TINA BEPPERLING works with trauma due to forced abortions and horrible discriminations associated with her relative poverty very similar to RAINER GANAHL and others in this show. Tina is a German citizen in Vienna who worked as an assistant to a famous Arte Povera artist and has shown - like Ganahl - in rather well established galleries that stopped showing her for a variety of reasons but in her case, it was an ex-artist boy friend who promised her to make sure her carrier had a glass ceiling. She has a son who works with nature and shares her life between the capital of a former empire and the beautiful nature she cultivates together with her son. She is a retired art educator from the most prestigious Austrian art academy and knows the game of love, pain and fame as a parent who decided to be a mother on her own to dedicate her life to books, education and fine art.
CEDRIC BALLESTEROS was brought into the gallery by Aleksandra who met her in Mexiko City after graduating from the art academy Stuttgart were Ganahl was a professor of fine Art. The Polish born artist and gallery curator wanted to enjoy the freedom from her catholic country and ended up meeting many people in a very remote catholic former Austrian empire - Mexico - that labors and profits from trade with the US economy with plenty of harsh contrasts - one being that journalists can get easily killed when they are approaching illegal activities. Cedric is a Mexican woman who married into Berlin and shares with all artists the believe in feminine autonomy and the freedom of choice and hate to be violated. It is interesting how this Mexican artist plays with Christian symbols of desires and their dangers often encountered in her country of origin but also in Berlin.
AL JARRI is a forgotten and disappeared artist-collector who accumulated explicit images in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There is little information available on this person in regard to gender, origin and intention of the work. The name suggest to be Middle Eastern and the taste seems to be somehow of a French dissident mind addressing art historical and political body politics. The film is somehow unique and alludes to Duchamp’s masturbation machine. We see the bicycle as a masturbation machine transferred from a 16 millimeter film. Duchamp’s large glass is a big chocolate machine and everybody knows the chair with a bicycle but in this case we see what Duchamp was evading to show us. Today, with Trump as a pussy grabbing monster in court, we can only hope he gets a guilty verdict which then would disqualify him from the office that is supposed to be respected. A sexist who lies under oath and is known for bankrupting nearly all things he has touched in his life, the porn collection by this mostly unknown artist and the nudity implicating film and vintage pictures are just appropriate to illustrate and hide at the same time the fact that porn is AI of the mind to ease corruption and the life with economic crimes. Hence, this work mirrors the obscenity of Trump and his abuse of power.
COMMEDESMARXISTS is the brain child of the sculputre and fashion designer RAINER GANAHL who was trained to be a historian, an art historian, a psychologist, and a philosopher and linguist but descended into the loser battle field of fine art, where he has remained tilll today. In all likelihood it had to to with his master of fine art fro the migrant Korean professor Nam June Paik who gave him a master in fine arts from the art academy Dusseldorf where he could observe how even Richter had nearly all his ideas and lots of his work processes taken from his students. He himself has done nothing but being a professor of digital narration, sculputre and other things till he was falsely accused of having accused his art academy of being ultra right wing when the AFD (Alternative for Germany, a truly right wing party) entered government and his teaching style - mostly simply listening and talking - turned him in. The work on COMMEDESMARXISTS was initiated as a jewelry project and leads the artist back to his early alma mater - the academy of Applied art in Vienna, the birth place of Jugendstil - where he was surrounded by students from the Fashion department, namely Vivienne Westwood and other punk people like Helmut Lang etc. Some many years later, when studying and work drove him to NYC and the towers World Trade Center come down, Ganahl lived with a wealthy banking lady from Japan who was against her will forced to abort their baby because he was not Japanese and had no money. It was Ganahl, who pushed her through 4 years and through graduation at Parson College of fashion where his lover was able to re-remember his sewing and design skills. Due to the New York City and the world transforming events he managed to refresh his memory of fashion and fashion design a in his own family.
RAINER GANAHL, trained also as media and AI artist has works in many international museums and yet, he still can’t pay his bills but believes in fine Art, justice, protest art and radical education outside the teaching machine. He is a marxist hating all implementation of marxism and communism. He is a left Hegelian who understand that revolutions are terrible and only delay the change brought by technology and industrialization. He is indebted to many of his super wealthy USA teachers that spanned the world because his learning and working institutions were able and are still able to attract the best. In particular to Columbia University where he got a one person show with his world wide renowned series Seminar/lecture which consists simply of photographing people who think without much explanation except the place, the stuff they talked about and the professors who gave the talk. This series by the way is ongoing and the avid reader and learner throughout his life reaches even with his recent art works out to the Columbia University students that barricaded them in the building to get suspended. His suspension from his teaching university had also some of the same features except much more harmless and without the distraction of school property. Ganahl uses now his time to go back to his sources. Tailoring, designing, literature, poetry, fine art and the work his work children who are taken from him but who at least learn from him via his media presences. Ganahl knows that power of education and means this in a radical way. He wants to instigate with his societal games the curiosity and criticality of his public and hopes to do so albeit of his ability to sell his art. He opposes the drilling and forcing and beating of children the way he experienced it when he still was allowed to see his far underage children who he has been deprived of seeing due to a mother who asks for ownership papers of the split family apartment that is written on his name. Ganahl has spent quite a lot of time with the question of what really happened in the 20th century apart of the books written by winning parties. As a trained philosopher he wonders why people destroy life and archives. make war and retroactively lie even under oath. Even today, his waste art works are subject to distraction by his ignorant neighbors who physically trashed part of it. He also has difficulties to pay for his storages. In this show he only shows has a flag that speaks of the ordeal of people who are victims of crime and genocide and are unable to speak for themselves. His partner , teacher and collaborator Peng Xiangheng helps him to survive this ordeal to survive without many means. Unlike Navalny, Ganahl’s opponent have not yet managed to kill him but there are those who tried and tried hard with lethal methods.
PENG XIANGHENG is a chinese painter, film maker, critic and a model of Commedesmarxists as well the private Mandarin teacher of Ganahl who has been extensively trained in Lacanian psychoanalysis and consumed most of his life therapeutical help. She is from a land that has no democracy and trust in their own institutions but filled with many people. Her home town has approximately 30 million inhabitants and her educational standards are top the way is really in the spirit of Confucius concerned about education. She is herself is the result of social Mainland China’s social engineering and has suffered in the radical implementation of Karl Marx’s idea of a classless society that we know has created quite havoc over the years. Ganahl himself was terrorized when he saw how this government killed thousands of people around the time the walls came down. The key world is Tianmen Square which forced many people from the best schools to leave this amazing beautiful country that now is on an expanding curve through the help of all means including the stealing of ideas and technology developed in the USA thanks to their status as an immigration country and a place to find good paying jobs without even being asked about the legal or illegal presence in the country. The USA has no physical registration laws and admires migration because they see in it the origin of their wealth. It is therefor so SAD to use a Trump term when FAMINE, MASS DISPLACEMENT AND THE DESTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE TO RESURRECT for some Carte Blanch politics of war in the Middle East. This is more than an explosive situation and could cost the current USA president his second term and put in place a person who already has proofed that he considers himself immune from prosecution.
MOSE ERNEST TOLLIVER was an African American artist from the Deep South who suffered a work accident and begann to paint topics that are considered a tabu. His works are in many collections of which I wanna mention only a few. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Smithsonian, American Art Museum and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Rainer Ganahl has also artworks in the last two mentioned collections.
EMILY WISNIEWSKY is a young NYC based artist who knows how to organize art exhibitions and even art fairs. She works in all media. She produces gender based works and is not ashamed to paint her private parts. She is aware how disgusting the current president is and how he debased the body of women, the colors of their skins and how he debased and defaced the highest office of the USA which is at least now negotiated in a court room. All these artists are for sale if the price is right.
Welcome to DAUMENLUTSHER BERLIN’S shadow cabinet.
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