Presskopf at DREI – Art Viewer

Artists: Marie Angeletti, Laura Langer, Dudu Quintanilha, Julia Scher

Exhibition title: Presskopf

Curated by: Raoul Klooker

Venue: DREI, Cologne, Germany

Date: November 17, 2021 – January, 29, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and DREI, Cologne

In today’s age, when work spaces and private living space increasingly overlap and every movement in analogue and digital spaces is registered as data, the idea of refusing easy legibility and transparency becomes ever more interesting, precisely because it seems increasingly unreachable. In behavioural psychology, the term Black Box is used as a metaphor for psychological and cognitive processes which cannot be objectively observed using scientific methods. Although its inputs and an outputs are known, the inner life of the box remain a mystery.

Three new paintings by Laura Langer, which show the corrugated upper rim of a tin can with the label ‘Presskopf’ in front of a red background, similarly provide the viewer with only the surface of the object. While it appears to only be merely the quotidian product of a butcher shop, the words written on its lid evoke various uncanny associations with the contents of the tin – from a head in a closed container to the commodified ‘head’ as an uncountable quantity. Rather like the advertising posters we encounter repeatedly in the city, the motif recurs like a déjà-vu in the rooms of the exhibition.

Marie Angeletti’s series of symmetrical, abstract paintings on varnished synthetic leather allude to us the symmetrical blots of the infamous Rorschach test in psychology. According to the Rorschach test, the free associations of the onlooker are meant to reveal their hidden personality disorders. The shiny enamel surfaces in Angeletti’s paintings function like mirrors in which vague outlines of bodies are recognisable between abstract forms that are completed by the viewers’ reflections and projections.

In 2016, the artist Dudu Quintanilha spent two weeks in a psychiatric institution in Colônia Juliano Moreira, a neighborhood within the Taquara area of Rio de Janeiro, in order to create a performance and video project with the residents. Since the

institution’s patients are legally considered as Incapaz (lacking capacity), they cannot be seen in any of the videos from the resulting installation. The installation raises the question of the possibility of performativity and self-empowered participation in artistic production within the context of psychiatry. The patients retreat from the documentary gaze by operating the camera and filming the artist themselves.

Another artistic proposal for the empowerment of patients under medical observation was put forward by Julia Scher in 1992. Preparatory drawings outline a fictional ‘Children’s surveillance station’, never realised, which was to be developed for the Hospital Museum Oldenburg. It would have enabled children to become familiar with the live video surveillance technology used in hospitals at the time to watch over patients and newborns, thereby allowing then to consciously remove themselves from the cameras’ field of vision

– Raoul Klooker

Marie Angeletti (*1984, Marseille) lives and works in Berlin. Her most recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Edouard Montassut, Paris; Carlos/Ishikawa, London (both 2020); Commercial Street (The Capri Lounge), Los Angeles; and Lars Friedrich, Berlin (both 2019). Her work is part of the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; FRAC Aquitaine-MECA, Bordeaux; and the FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon.

Laura Langer (b. 1986, Buenos Aires) lives and works in Berlin. Her recent solo exhibitions have been at The Wig, Berlin; Weiss Falk, Basel (both 2021); Portikus, Frankfurt am Main (2020). Solo exhibitions are planned for 2022 at Kunsthaus Glarus and Braunsfelder, Cologne.

Dudu Quintanilha (b. 1987, Sao Paulo) lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, where he graduated from the Städelschule with the work Incapaz (Incompetent) (2021). This, awarded the graduate prize, entered the Marburg Pohl Collection. Quintanilha’s most recent solo exhibitions have been at Jo Anne, Frankfurt am Main (2020); Mite Gallery; MAMBA Museum of Modern Art Buenos Aires (both Buenos Aires, both 2019).

Presskopf, 2021, exhibition view, DREI, Cologne

Marie Angeletti R02, 2020, Enamel on pleather 130 × 180 cm

Marie Angeletti R05, 2020, Enamel on pleather 130 × 180 cm

Marie Angeletti R06, 2020, Enamel on pleather 130 × 180 cm

Marie Angeletti R08, 2020, Enamel on pleather 130 × 180 cm

Marie Angeletti R11, 2020, Enamel on pleather 130 × 180 cm

Presskopf, 2021, exhibition view, DREI, Cologne

Julia Scher, Untitled (Children’s Surveillance Room), 1992, Set of five drawings: 1x pencil and watercolor on paper; 4x pencil, partly colored on glassine each: 30 × 42 cm