Cloak of Mercy at HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts

Artists: Caroline David, Claude Eigan, Maren Karlson, Alexandra Koumantaki, Julian-Jakob Kneer, Tora Schultz Larsen, Anni Puolakka, Lauryn Youden

Exhibition title: Cloak of Mercy

Curated by: Christina Gigliotti

Venue: HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany

Date: April 29 – May 26, 2019

Photography: Rocco Ruglio-Misurell / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts, Berlin

Ten Good Reasons to Stay Alive:

Painting all the flowers of the earth
Veilchen Trank nach Hildegard von Bingen
Silver Horse by Yoko Ono
Can love heal cancer?
A fox watching me lay in the grass
Reincarnation in the heart of a piece of quartz
Hold my hair up
Shedding my bodies
The spirit that rules the fire and lives within it
My nothing from which I extracted an everything

–Maren Karlson

I’m grateful to have survived my second winter in Berlin. Most mornings her metallic deadening weight felt too much to bear. At some point in January I became so desperate I started to ask people their survival strategies for curbing the inevitable dread that comes with minimal daylight, biting air, and an empty bank account. This exhibition transpires from an endeavor to materialize the many conversations that took place with friends, family and colleagues over these past cold months, in order to shed light on and share the ways in which empathy and compassion play a role in coping with trauma, affliction, and rehabilitation. The artworks presented in Cloak of Mercy explore the mechanisms of empathy we pour into ourselves and others, at times coming to fruition by way of storytelling, making kin with humans and other earthlings, the creative compulsion, acceptance of otherness, and reconciliation with the dead as well as the living.

Cloak of Mercy, 2019, exhibition view, HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts, Berlin

Maren Karlson, Veiled Lady Suit, Pencil, canvas, thread, PVC, 106 x 50 cm, 2017

Cloak of Mercy, 2019, exhibition view, HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts, Berlin

Julian-Jakob Kneer, am Ende gibt es doch ein Ende (game is play), Papier-mâché mask, 115 x 90 x 47 cm, 2018

Julian-Jakob Kneer, every minute of the future is a memory from the past, Latex gloves, latex stockings, metal chain, lacquer on wooden shoes, silk ribbon, nail, Dimensions variable, 2018

Cloak of Mercy, 2019, exhibition view, HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts, Berlin

Tora Schultz Larsen, future behavioral marketplace 110 (cut cut circle), Metal, concrete, glue, glass, iron powder, Dimensions variable, 2019

Tora Schultz Larsen, future behavioral marketplace 110 (cut cut circle), Metal, concrete, glue, glass, iron powder, Dimensions variable, 2019 (detail)

Lauryn Youden, Eighteen year old Beth, Ink on paper, 32 x 42.5 cm (framed), 2017

Cloak of Mercy, 2019, exhibition view, HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts, Berlin

Maren Karlson, Blooming thru a dead leaf, Pencil on paper, 21 x 29,7 cm, 2019

Maren Karlson, I can‘t claim angel‘s wings but I have tasted the aura (Angel’s Room), Pencil on paper, 40 x 50 cm, 2019

Cloak of Mercy, 2019, exhibition view, HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts, Berlin

Caroline David, Hollow Standing Flower (Sun in Fog), Ceramic, 40.5 x 10 x 38 cm, 2019

Anni Puolakka, Rumina, Video with sound, 8:09, 2017

Cloak of Mercy, 2019, exhibition view, HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts, Berlin

Julian-Jakob Kneer, slime-conference, Slime, cigarette butt, Dimensions variable, 2019

Alexandra Koumantaki, Parallel Sentiment Ω, Epoxy clay, silicone, LED, wires, 2019

Lauryn Youden, Scrying under the eyes of Joyce, Brass serpent teapot filled with black ink, black ink, water, brass bowl, brass serpent talisman and tail, wooded serpent, mirror, The Brotherhood of Light tarot cards, brass candlesticks, handdyed fabric, copper sheet, Joyce’s silk robe, offerings for Joyce: dried roses, a fresh rose, frankincense resin, rose of Jericho, caduceus buttons, dried witch hazel, a poem, Dimensions variable, 2019