Poisonous Kiss. Lovely Venom at Tick Tack

Artist: Lenz Geerk, Vivian Greven, Mevlana Lipp

Exhibition title: Poisonous Kiss. Lovely Venom

Curated by: Vincent Vanden Bogaard

Venue: Tick Tack, Antwerp, Belgium

Date: December 18, 2020 – January 31, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Tick Tack, Antwerp

TICK TACK is pleased to present ‘Poisonous Kiss. Lovely Venom.’ A painting exhibition with, for the first time in Belgium, the works of three Düsseldorf based artists:

Lenz Geerk
Vivian Greven
Mevlana Lipp

The show will transport you through an atmosphere of love, silence and dangerous liaisons.

We are proud to announce Ulrike Ottinger on CINEMA TICK TACK for the duration of the exhibition

Curated by Vincent Vanden Bogaard.

MEVLANA LIPP

Mevlana Lipp (1989, DE) lives in Leverkusen and works in Düsseldorf. His work has been exhibited internationally across the US, UK, Germany, Italy, France and Denmark. Solo exhibitions include Eden, KuK Gallery, Cologne (2019); Basic Instinct, Ak-Raum, Cologne (2019), Paradise Lost, Annarumma Gallery, Naples (2017), Fluidum at The Other Space by Andersens Contemporary, Copenhagen

(2020) and Calypso, Public Gallery, London (2020). Selected group exhibitions include Ruttkowski;68, Cologne; Collection Kunsthaus Kollitsch, Klagenfurt; Saatchi Gallery, London and 03, PM/AM Gallery, London.

“The natural world is magical, mysterious and ultimately unknowable. The Garden of Eden is the original metaphor for being, that unimaginable paradise from which humans were banished but seem always to seek to return to, perhaps like the Romantics who sought the sublime in nature.

More recently, science has revealed captivating mysteries about the natural world. Trees in a forest communicate and share resources through a complex mycorrhizal network of interconnected roots and fungi. In the deepest reaches of the ocean,clusters of tiny organisms flourish around thermal jets and metre-high corals grow that are thousands of years old.

Since the earliest ages, nature has compelled and terrified humans. Cologne-based artist Mevlana Lipp is deeply fascinated by the natural world in its pure state, as well as in the space it occupies in the human imagination. To Mevlana, the curling tendril of a vine, the rounded form of a seed pod or the gentle swaying feathers of a crinoid become signifiers of complex sets of emotions and experiences, communicated in a language outside of human linguistic codes. Part semiotic metaphor part primordial creatures from the deep, the organic organisms in Mevlana’s artwork reach out across time and consciousness to whisper about where all things began.“

by Maria Zemtsova for Artmaze Mag

VIVIAN GREVEN

Vivian Greven’s painting is based on an adept play with various notion of bodies, being and representation, with concepts of classical antiquity merging with pop art and digital image worlds. Vivian Greven’s painting is characteristic of our present times, which are shaped by the internet and social media and thus dissolve the hierarchies between original, reproduction and simulation. The art historical and contemporary historical nestling corresponds with Greven’s painterly treatment of surfaces. Parts of her painting rise as actual reliefs that encounter sprayed or painted fictions of bodies and space. The aesthetic of her pictures vacillates between the vocabulary of physical painting and the ethereal illusion of LCD windows.

Vivian Greven (1985, DE) is already represented in internationally renowned museum collections such as the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, and since September 2019 she is participating in the show “Jetzt! Junge Malerei in Deutschland” at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Kunstsammlung Chemnitz – Museum Gunzenhauer, the Museum Wiesbaden, Deichtorhallen Hamburg. Her works have also been on view in international exhibitions, including recently at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, the Sammlung Philara Düsseldorf, the Braunsfelder Family Collection Cologne and the Salzburger Kunstverein. Ucpoming group exhibitions amgong others will be at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, DE and Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai, CN. A solo show is currently shown at Kunstpalais Erlangen and another one will be presented in 2021 at Kunstmuseum Langmatt, CH.

Courtesy Kadell Willborn, Dusseldorf

LENZ GEERK

Lenz Geerk (1988, Basel) lives and works in Düsseldorf. Geerk creates psychologically charged paintings that are removed from any specific time or place. Emphasizing his subjects in such a way as to draw out the hidden emotions of the human psyche, Geerk depicts people at the threshold of excitation and in the throes of exploration. With postures and gestures a fiction of representation, Geerk imagines how a certain fragile moment, derived from neither model nor photograph, can instead be expressed through atmosphere and body language. The nearly monochromatic palettes, only occasionally warmed by other colors, adds to the aura of emotional tension.

Recent solo exhibitions include Galeria Acappella, Naples; Galerie Valentin, Paris; Galeria Mascota, Mexico City; Gerhard Hofland Gallery, Amsterdam; The Cabin, Los Angeles, Robert Projects, California, among others.

Courtesy Roberts Projects, California

ULRIKE OTTINGER

Ulrike Ottinger (1942) is a German Filmmaker and photographer. Her works have received numerous awards, including the German Federal Film Prize and the German Film Critics’ Prize. Her oeuvre has been honored at the most important international festivals, retrospectives and exhibitions, including the Cinémathèque française and Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and numerous international film festivals. In 2010 Ulrike Ottinger was honored with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, in 2011 she received the Hannah Höch Prize of the city Berlin for her artistic life’s work.

Ulrike Ottinger is a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin and Munich and since 2019 a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which presents the Academy Awards (Oscars) annually.

For CINEMA TICK TACK, her work Superbia (1986) will be screened daily after sunset for the duration of the exhibition.

“I am pride. The proud root of all evil.
I am Superbia, the first of the seven capital sins. I am always the first.
The tree of wickedness grows out of me. My six daughters are its forbidden fruit:
gluttony – indolence – avarice – wrath – envy – lust.
But see for yourself how Luciphera Superbia, her coach, drawn by the six minor sins,
drives in triumph to her wedding with the world, accompanied by her retinue and by Blasphemia, her
maid.”

– Prologue narrated by lrm Hermann

Poisonous Kiss. Lovely Venom.
Note of intend

Through that short text I would like to address some words to the audience who’s coming to visit the exhibition “Poisonous Kiss. Lovely Venom” at Tick Tack.

I would merely tell them that each project could be the outcome of a long intellectual process or a combination of different factors such as research or deep readings. But in the case of « Poisonous Kiss. Lovely Venom. » I took an opposite direction instead.

With the present exhibition I expect to provide the audience with a strong narrative with a two layers reading. The first one is more related to my personal experience, more related to a combination of feelings. It is good to remember that above all, the present show is a result of life events: encounters, friendship and shared opportunities.

Then, come the second reading layer: a title and a narrative. It’s about time, love and passion. About the personal interpretation of growing love and desire. About dangerous liaisons. It came for me as a challenge to unify the work of the three artists through pictures and evocations making solid resonances with our inner sentiments, with our personal interpretation of love.

To shape it the way you’re able to see it, I’ve taken time to imagine it and discuss with Lenz Geerk, Vivian Greven and Mevlana Lipp about their own impressions and the way they were developing their practice over the time. It was important for me to respect the integrity of the artists and their work while, as a fan of literature and cinema, building up a coherent story.

I honestly believe that with the poem I wrote you’ll get all the keys to enter the atmosphere of “Poisonous Kiss. Lovely Venom.”

-Vincent Vanden Bogaard

Poisonous Kiss. Lovely Venom.
Poem by Vincent Vanden Bogaard

Your arms.
Your body squeezed against mine.
The little dance
of your nimble fingers
is making my back shiver.

The tropical forest
illuminates me.
The scent of the plants
and the wild weeds
fill us with smells.
The mesmerising colours.

Overwhelmed by the spores,
by the amber-coloured substances.
Lifeblood and sweat streams.
Your lianas legs.

Keeping my senses sharp,
this elation going
right through
is a serum.

The claws of your passion.
Your loving teeth marks.
The venom of your kisses,
slowly taking effect.

Then, we go silent.
My recollections fade away
and the time disappears.

-Vincent Vanden Bogaard