Manfred Pernice

"... RINO

 We are pleased to announce our next exhibition: a joint project conceived and mounted in the rooms of Mai 36 Galerie by the two Berlin-based artists Manfred Pernice and Martin Städeli. A few thoughts on the project: 

Exhibitions obviously take place in rooms; similarly, presumable/probable rooms may well emerge in the minds of viewers.

All we need is a few coordinates – corner points, references, quotations, objects – in order to stake out an area, which can then be inhabited. The idea of a joint exhibition at the M.M.Museum in Florence is one such reference and it leads in turn to other points (Marino Marini himself, the Museum itself with its shelves, podiums, its inventory, sculptural figuration).

Marino Marini (M) and the Marino Marini Museum are the original impetus; as the point of departure they become the symbol for questions regarding figurative abstraction and, in fact, figuration or representation per se. M functions as a recollection of questions on representation, figuration and abstraction, which have supposedly long been surmounted, resolved and answered. M functions as a figure through which these questions repeatedly come into play.

We “move around” freely in the context thus generated, that is, more or perhaps less interested, committed and detached. This leads to articulations that may be divergent, evaluative, exaggerated or resolutely argumentative. Repetition, iteration, stack, fall, variation, horses and museum, art versus craft, aggression as ..., memory, deformation, ...

That will all speak for itself in the exhibition, as it always does. (Text: Manfred Pernice, Martin Städeli)