Cyprien Gaillard at KW

A new work by the French artist has complex implications which can only be revealed through acts of defiance and neglect.

Preserving a monument goes hand in hand with destroying it. In order to preserve architecture, cultural monuments and relics, they are often re-located, thus abolishing the original context. The potential knock-on effects are urban displacement and the disappearance of the concepts of autonomous geography and archeology. The dislocation of a monument not only alters the history of its original location, but also leads to a radical re-interpretation of the monument itself.

For his exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Cyprien Gaillard has created a new, large-scale piece, which—whilst departing from a prototype of the monument—completes itself in the process. Similarly to the relocation of the Pergamon Altar, 72,000 bottles of beer of the brand "Efes" have been transported from Turkey to Germany.

Solo exhibition at KW Institute for contemporary Art, Berlin
March 27 – May 22, 2011 — Solo exhibition at KW Institute for contemporary Art, Berlin March 27 – May 22, 2011

The cardboard boxes filled with bottles form the steps of the pyramid. In visiting the monument—by climbing the sculpture and drinking the beer—its destruction is already initiated. The barbaric removal of single architectural elements that have been transported from their original location to Berlin embodies both the concept of displacement and a tourist colonialism. Despite the geographic origin of alcohol often being of great importance to the consumer, the importance of provenance seems to diminish as its consumption increases. Along the lines of the gradual destruction of the sculpture the alcohol gradually dispels and destroys both body and mind. The physical hangover is also an architectural one, from which one has to recover.

Equal to a collective amnesia in an active neglect of the sculptural form—lost in the hopeless interaction with the monument—the successive destruction becomes an aesthetic of resistance.

<i>Cyprien Gaillard. The Recovery of Discovery</i>.

Solo exhibition at KW Institute for contemporary Art, Berlin
March 27 – May 22, 2011 — *Cyprien Gaillard. The Recovery of Discovery*. Solo exhibition at KW Institute for contemporary Art, Berlin March 27 – May 22, 2011

March 27 – May 22, 2011
Cyprien Gaillard
The Recovery of Discovery
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststraße 69, Berlin

Cyprien Gaillard at KW

A new work by the French artist has complex implications which can only be revealed through acts of defiance and neglect.

Latest on News

Latest on Domus