November 12 - 27, 2019
Kristina Michalski: SPIEL
In 2019's second exhibition the Malerkapelle presents works by Kristina Michalski relating to the theme "Spiel" ("Game" or "Play" in German).
The artist explains the exhibition as an homage and nostalgic glorification of childhood.
She addresses the urge to play, the loss of innocence and the painful lack of abandon. The Malerkapelle becomes an archive of childhood. "SPIEL" is a new chapter from Michalski's "indeterminate archive" which comprises all of her works that she understands as fleeting moments or snapshots in time: Permanently changing, yet undefined and only for a short amount of time.
Kristina Michalski was born in 1984 in Greiz, grew up near Nordheim and went to the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig. In 2010 she finished her studies as a Scientist of Art with a magister (master's degree) and in 2011 she received her diploma in Fine Art.
Her "indeterminate archive", which conceptually seeks to find connections between images and language, has been on display in various exhibitions.
She works as an art educator at the Allgemeine Konsumverein in Braunschweig and is a member of the einRaum gallery.
Website of the artist
Exhibition flyer
Opening Speech by Lino Heissenberg (in German)
Images & flyer courtesy of the artist.
September 26 - October 4, 2019
n.bodyproblem: DIGITAL AFTERLIFE
"Digital Afterlife" was based on the anonymous blog n.bodyproblem, which went online in 2018 and, at the time the show opened, had over 250 images on display.
It is an anonymous project, but the blog is not focused on this anonymity. The website does not build a portfolio for an artist in the classical sense - with name, vita, and a face - but consciously operates in futility and without a set goal, as many Deviantart- and Tumblr-accounts managed by private individuals who don't pursue a career as an artist do. The blog itself is to be understood as a work in itself.
n.bodyproblem is an experiment that mixes and re-mixes classical digitized drawings with polaroids, digital photographs and images created in video game editors as well as with online-specific media like glitch art and art requests.
The show itself, too, is part of n.bodyproblem's body of work, by extending the blog: "Digital Afterlife" is the state in which the works have been put since the blog's inception. They either have been removed from the artist's own professional portfolio or have been created exclusively for the blog and thus have only been availailable in a digital format ever since. Now the works are back on display in the physical world, but in a manner that resembles an online feed. In general, exhibitions are more valuable and a more legitimate kind of exposure for an artist than a website or blog, but "Digital Afterlife" rejects that paradigm by playfully dismantling it: The use- and worthless online pieces are back on display, but they'll never hang on a wall. The exhibition is rather a re-enactment of the blog instead of the blog simulating ideal exhibition conditions or existing purely for archival and documentary purposes.
The meaning of "Digital Afterlife" has become inverted: The digital afterlife of one's own data on Facebook, twitter etc. has been discussed on many levels, from its intimate and interpersonal to its legal and commercial dimensions, but n.bodyproblem does not host facsimiles or data relating to deceased individuals or art that has an existence outside the world wide web. The works, outside the internet, would be dead, and are shared openly and without attribution to any legal name. The digital afterlife is the only life these works ever had.
Website of the artist
Image courtesy of the artist.