Isabella Fürnkäs at Hua International

Artist: Isabella Fürnkäs

Exhibition title: Build Me a House

Venue: Hua International, Berlin, Germany

Date: December 3, 2021 – February 12, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Hua International, Berlin

Hua International is pleased to announce Build Me a House, a solo exhibition by Isabella Fürnkäs. In her multi-media work, the Japanese-born French-German artist explores questions of bodily intimacy, digital relationality, and the fragility of societal structures.

Build Me a House will bring together a new body of sculpture, sound, performance, drawing, and video. The focal point of the exhibition is a durational performance and sound work that unfolds around two, large metal sculptures: dome-like constructions that resemble rudimentary dwellings. With their cage-like structures, these forms emphasize a fluidity between interior and exterior space, permeability and interiority, shelter and confinement. Entitled Ataraxia, the performance takes its name from a Greek philosophical term that means a “state of serene calmness” or “an untroubled and tranquil state of the soul.” The performers Nikolas Brummer and Marlene Kollender activate the sculptures—which are sheathed in thin layers of fabric and projected upon—with actions that imply moments of inhabitation, formation, and deconstruction. Construction stones encircle the sculptures, which the performers slowly move around them. Their constant movements in and around the sculptures, as well as the essentially nomadic nature of these objects, gesture toward the impermanence, transience, and variability of all things—towards finding freedom in flux. A sound scape designed by Anchoress and Tobias Textor, who will additionally compose live music for the performance during the opening, adds a sonic dimension to this immersive, multi-medial experience.

In the same room, a series of interchangeable black and white ceramic orbs are installed on the wall. Reminiscent of the abstract strategy game Go (Weiqi), they suggest endless variations of flexible constellations. Fürnkäs’ Insomnia Drawings resonate with the constant connection and interchangeable routines enacted by Ataraxia’s performers, as well as the porousness of her igloo-like sculptures. A new series of drawings entitled The Red Drawings will also be shown. Emerging from a raw, intimate practice, the drawings “visualize a moment of cognitive overload” in which one’s inner boundaries collapse and the world enters unhindered. The final room of the exhibition stages a meeting of the digital and the organic. A video entitled The Truth Lies in the Eye of Beholder loops atop a half-ton of earth. Drawn from a personal archive of footage shot by Fürnkäs, this associative web of images works like a visual collage that combines and overlays countless images, imparting the sensation of drifting amidst ambiguous flows, movements, interreferences, and interjections. (Jesi Khadivi)

Isabella Fürnkäs (born Tokyo, 1988) lives and works between Berlin and Düsseldorf. She is a leading voice among young German artists working in multi-media performance and has been dedicated to this intersection since her studies at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.Fürnkäs’ work has been exhibited at Kunsthalle Wien, Sprengel Museum, Museum Abteiberg, at the 13. Biennale for Contemporary Art Dakar and in the project space of the Julia Stoschek Collection in Düsseldorf. Her performances were recently on view at Salon Acme in Mexico City, Kölnischen Kunstverein, Manifesta 11, Akademie der Künste der Welt and Pogobar KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin. She has participated in numerous residency programs including the Cité des Arts, Paris; Goethe Institut, Dakar; travel grant of the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen and the Bronner Residency Tel Aviv. Fürnkäs is a Fellow of the Berlin Masters Program and a scholar of the Akademie der Künste Berlin in 2021.

Isabella Fürnkäs, Ataraxia, 2021, Hua International Berlin, video by Yuki Ghost, courtesy of the artist and Hua International

Isabella Fürnkäs, Build Me a House, 2021, exhibition view, Hua International Berlin, photo by Timo Ohler, courtesy of the artist and Hua International

Isabella Fürnkäs, Ataraxia, 2021, performance, Hua International Berlin,photo by Robert Rieger,courtesy of the artist and Hua International