Sanna Helena Berger at PHILIPPZOLLINGER

Artist: Sanna Helena Berger

Exhibition title: Nicht-nur-Spekulativ

Venue: PHILIPPZOLLINGER, Zürich, Switzerland

Date: April 6 – May 11, 2024

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and PHILIPPZOLLINGER, Zürich

We are thrilled to present the first solo presentation in Switzerland with Sanna Helena Berger.

In Nicht-nur-Spekulativ, Berger creates an exhibition articulating two conditions, zwischen Haben und Sehen. Exploring standard formats, display concepts and containers, thematising the exhibition format itself as collaborator, Berger takes a forking path. Referencing modernist minimalism as the aesthetics-of-aesthetics, conceptualising her idea of ‘Objektschwäche’ – Objektive Kriterien der Wesentlichkeit: Das Material. She re-positions domestic objects as readymades and re-conditions them as unreadymades. Showing them in two conditions, where the extremely minimal setting as ‘Kunst-haus’ is contrasted by the familiar objects echoing home-standard measurements and models as ‘haus-Kunst’.

Site-specificity-cum-size-specificity conceptualises the conditions of collecting where Nicht-nur-spekulativ but Konkrete, Konsequente Objekte contemplates art collecting as commodification versus commitment. Since the title refers, not merely to the ‘not-only-speculative’ ways of concretising work’s meaning, but to the artwork’s inherent objection to speculative collecting. Berger opposes the idea of acquiring artworks as a speculative value, whether in storage or on show, by letting the artworks stipulate their conditions of ownership, not vice versa. By size, by assemblage, by caveats of housing – concepts by which the artwork should not fit the ‘house’, but the ‘house’ should be fitted to the artwork. Konsequenzen des Besitzes where conditions set by the artwork premises its potentiality for collection.

Utilising German principled art-academic terminology as the epitome of Kunst-Kritische Manierismen – an aesthetic Konkrete Argumente poetry – words are not simply their meaning but also their materialisation. Where reflection, via works which materialises through German literature and theory, titles, themes and content, on what differentiates a theoretical critical practice from a Nicht-bloß-spekulativ critical praxis. Considerations in keeping with her formal practice, where both discursive and concise discourse thematise and materialise critical agency. By infiltration and mimicry, but never by mockery, of post-institutional standardised principles of production, of both fine arts and knowledge, whilst adopting anything-but a besser-wisser attitude, posing both questions and making potential statements through a Nicht-nur-Spekulativ Kontext.

Sanna Helena Berger was born 1983, in Sweden and is based in Berlin. Recent exhibitions include at Rinde am Rhein (Düsseldorf, upcoming); Centralbanken (Oslo, upcoming); Kaiserwache (Freiburg, upcoming); Cittipunkt (Berlin, 2024); Shahin Zarinbal (Berlin, 2023); Den Frie (Copenhagen, 2023); Baerum Kunsthall (Oslo, 2023); Galerija Miroslav Kraljević (Zagreb, 2023); Waf Galerie (Vienna, 2023); Skånes Konstförening (Malmö, 2023); Kunsthalle Bremerhaven (2022); Spazio ORR (Brescia, 2022); Hosêk Contemporary (Berlin, 2022) and Cell Project Space (London, 2020).