An Open Relationship With Your Image at Urlaub Projects

Artists: Judith Dorothea Gerke, Lindsay Lawson, Marge Monko

Exhibition title: An Open Relationship With Your Image

Venue: Urlaub Projects, Berlin, Germany

Date: September 30 – October 4, 2016

Photography: Maria Leon, all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Urlaub Projects

Urlaub projects is pleased to present “An Open Relationship with Your Image”, the second group exhibition of a more extensive series that explores the relationship between the body and its surroundings from the perspective of contemporary forms of life (lifestyles).

In the book Raw Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Tiqqun uses the figure of the Young-Girl in terms of a gazing machine. An instrumental figure through which the impossibility of love under the light of the current economical structure is shown. The Young-Girl has neither gender nor age, because she is the model citizen that overpowers our desires and imaginings. She acts as a machine against the forms-of-life of the ongoing war, a war that becomes invisible due to the total character of its ends and means.

A war that is not happening far away but inside ourselves, which is why the Young-girl takes the control of our bodies and imposes on us a certain idea of success, fulfillment and happiness. There where “nothing seems to happen”, where “everything works perfectly well”, where an “ordinary situation” reigns, is where the Empire of the Young-Girl lives. But be careful: “The Young-Girl suddenly feels dizzy when the world stops revolving around her.” There where the system stops is where the different works of the exhibition examine the standard practices of the liquid society.

In this way, the exhibition “An Open Relationship with Your Image” reflects on the body and its colonization by capitalism in a context where new technologies and mass media seem to rule our desire for the sake of the efficient consumption of human beings´ most intimate relationships.

Judith Dorothea Gerke, Faceoff, 2016. Photography and ceramic. Models: Chiara, Hans, Marie, Anna. Styling: Tim Heyduck. Different sizes

Judith Dorothea Gerke, Faceoff, 2016 (detail). Photography and ceramic. Models: Chiara, Hans, Marie, Anna. Styling: Tim Heyduck. Different sizes

Lindsay Lawson, Rare Commemorative Timeline Vase Ceramic Like-New, 2013. Ceramic, acrylic paint. 74 cm x 34 cm Ø

Lindsay Lawson, Rare Commemorative Timeline Vase Ceramic Like-New, 2013 (detail). Ceramic, acrylic paint. 74 cm x 34 cm Ø

Judith Dorothea Gerke, Faceoff, 2016. Photography and ceramic. Models: Chiara, Hans, Marie, Anna. Styling: Tim Heyduck

Judith Dorothea Gerke, Faceoff, 2016 (detail). Photography and ceramic. Models: Chiara, Hans, Marie, Anna. Styling: Tim Heyduck

Lindsay Lawson, More Independent, More Compassionate, More Scientific, Less Old-Fashioned, Less Spiritual, Less Romantic, 2013. Photo mounted on wood panel with printed foil.100 cm x 50 cm

Lindsay Lawson, More Independent, More Compassionate, More Scientific, Less Old-Fashioned, Less Spiritual, Less Romantic, 2013 (detail). Photo mounted on wood panel with printed foil.100 cm x 50 cm