MARIANNE MUELLER

This autumn, we are glad to be back into Display’s former permanent space to open Marianne Mueller’s exhibition Sliding Self on Shelf. While she invests the art space, its architecture, its past, present, or future elements, sound contributions from our guests will intersperse the project throughout the month. She was joined in the space by Tobias Preisig, who composed the soundtrack and played a surround sound concert.   

SLIDING SELF ON SHELF

Asphaltfieber, Antinous, Display… The names succeed on the storefront as to reveal the momentary function of the premise, since 1890. From a cab company to a copy shop, from a coal store to an AIDS prevention center or the current art school and studio, the occupancies follow one another and leave their marks on the site. A long step splits the room lengthwise; corner molding, once installed to conceal construction joints, come to a screeching halt to make way for an angle or the large windowcase. Chandeliers, if there were any, have made space to cold white neon lights while leaving their ornamentation behind. Though, the reading of the items is blurred, as their functions have faded with the disappearance of the activities.
  
Undefined architectural elements, forgotten ornamentation, furnishings without specified roles or empty plinths is Marianne Mueller’s matter for her exhibition Sliding Self on Shelf at Display, in Berlin. They stay in the delicate position of being both parts of the architectures they integrate and independent features that have no architectural function as such. She gives them space to exist. More specifically, it is here the wall shelf – referring wether to medieval wall plinths belonging to liturgical furnishings, sometimes left empty, to the domestic shelf once cluttered with books or personal belongings or its industrial design history – which becomes the keystone and the pretext for the exhibition. Their special status enables them to embody, either wholly or metonymically, emotions, dreamlike and phantasmagorical apparitions, or simply the memory of works that have existed, disappeared or have been fantasized. Once stripped of their original functions, attention can also be focused on their plastic qualities. 

Through her installation, ceramic, photographic and editorial work, Marianne Mueller explores the frictions of memory within the corporeal and the architectural. With her ceramics, wether the Phantoms, Bouquets or Shelfs works, she allows herself to be guided by the amorphous nature of the material and the wobbly qualities of the objects, as well as by the fortuitous effects of the manufacturing process. In this way, she readily leaves her own traces and those of accidents. She activates strategies of camouflage, inversion and simulation within architectures, between what is commonly accepted and what is irrelevant to the public eye, between the tactile and the intangible. 

Marianne Mueller is an artist harnessing memory friction within the corporal and architectural. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include Museum of Photography, Ekaterinburg; Centro de Artes Visuals, Coimbra and Kunstmuseum Bern. She is the recipient of numerous international residencies, the Prix Moët & Chandon suisse pour l’art and multiple Swiss Art Awards. Her work forms part many international public collections and she has been a professor at the Zurich University of the Arts since 2007.

The exhibition is kindly supported by Pro Helvetia – Swiss arts council and by the Oertli Stiftung.

SOUND FROM ABOVE

We have invited the composer and violinist Tobias Preisig to contribute to the exhibition by creating a soundtrack. Sound from Above explores the multiple listening channels as an integral part of a space experience. Based on a real-life situation, the sound piece here adds to the idea that an architectural spatial setting is made up of a web of interrelations, including the sounds that pass through it indirectly.

 Tobias Preisig is a violin player – composer and improviser. His music explores the intersections of experimental, ambient and a wide range of electronica, as well as neo-contemporary. He performs solo and is also one half of the projects Egopusher (with Alessandro Giannelli) and tours in Europe and internationally in festivals such as Montreux Jazz, London Jazz, Mama Paris, Reeperbahn Hamburg, Jarasum Jazz South Korea and Tokyo Jazz Japan. Some of his recent collaborations include Colin Stetson’s Sorrow, The Cinematic Orchestra, Dieter Meier, Youn Sun Nah and Jan Bang. www.tobiaspreisig.com

PODCAST – SERIES OF SOUNDS

During the month of November, within the frame of Marianne Mueller’s solo exhibition, Sliding Self on Shelf, we are inviting personalities from French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland, Italy, US and Berlin, Germany, to join us by transmitting a sound contribution. The individual proposals take the form of interviews, poetry readings, DJ sets and sound pieces, and are broadcast on our display-berlin.com platform. 

Nov 8
SOUND #1 – ON DISPLAY / BY GIULIA HESS

Nov 16
SOUND #2 – SOUNDS ON SET / BY CAMILLE KAISER

Nov 23
SOUND #3 – 5 POEMS / BY BARRY SCHWABSKY

Dec 7
SOUND #4 – ARCHITECTURES DU SILENCE / BY MARINA STANIMIROVIC