September 2, 2008
HIGHWAY CHILD
TALES OF THE MODERN DAY DRIFTER curated by Emilie Trice
HELL GIRL N°2 2008 by Jaybo aka Monk
oil, acrylic and marker on canvas 90 x 90 cm
Artists Anonymous, Alec Soth, Brendan Flanagan, Ethan Hayes-Chute, Kenno, Jaybo, Maxime Ballesteros Biguet, Nacnud Ogaviz, Pete Wheeler, Warren Neidich.
Kollektiv Berlin
Landsberger Allee 54
http://www.kollektiv-berlin.com/
Leaving home with no intention of returning is an act of rebellion, of rebirth and, for many, a rite of passage. The circumstances that dictate what we initially call “home” are beyond our control, leaving us with two options: complacency or rejection. Metaphors of the open road and the rolling stone, among countless others, have long held a place in the vernacular of progressive culture, as have symbolic archetypes like the nomad, the expatriate and the drifter. In this vein, Highway Child, a term adapted from a Jimi Hendrix song, will deal with the numerous manifestations of “homelessness,” whether self-imposed or just another product of circumstance.
From literary expats like Henry Miller and Hemingway to the Beat icons Kerouac and Kesey, from road photographers like William Eggleston and Robert Frank to contemporary artists like Ryan McGinley, wanderlust has always catalyzed creation. Communal squatter culture, the adoption of new family so-to-speak, is symptomatic of this lifestyle, as is the alienation, be it social or psychological, which invariably accompanies new surroundings. The bizarre characters, the trials of faith and the dangers that dominate the unknown become a kind of magnifying glass, emphasizing the absurdity and the beauty that can only exist beyond the familiar, where our perception is heightened as we attempt to understand and co-exist with the foreign.
Among the artists exhibited in Highway Child is Alec Soth, whose acclaimed series Sleeping by the Mississippi portrayed his extensive travels down the river over the course of 5 years and catapulted him into the contemporary limelight after its inclusion in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. His photography captures the melancholy and unexpected poetry that always seem to find the lone traveler off the beaten path.
Brendan Flanagan and Ethan Hayes-Chute both create paintings that depict surreal landscapes, but in antithetical styles. While Flanagan’s massive, psychedelic compositions are wildly organic, Hayes-Chute painstakingly paints miniature, pseudo-realistic scenes of silent billboards, bizarre shelters, and literally broken homes.
The documented performances of Artists Anonymous reflect the darker currents of communal culture and self-imposed exile. The group itself embodies the Highway Child ethos and their triumphant return to Berlin after leaving two years ago epitomizes the act of forsaking one’s home in search of the proverbial greener pastures, which, it can be argued, they not only found, but annexed in a swift and merciless coup. Artists Anonymous will also be exhibited along side Joseph Beuys in the upcoming exhibition Die Revolution Sind Wir at the Hamburger Bahnhof (October 2008).
Jaybo, whose diverse creative enterprises have made him an iconic staple of Berliner subculture, escaped home at an early age and never looked back. His paintings expose the psychological turmoil that undermines the romanticism commonly attributed to the archetypal drifter. Kenno, living in Berlin since 1991, presents a body of work taken from his oeuvre, appropriately entitled HeimatloseVolkskunst (Homeless Folk Art), made completely under the status of alien citizenship and, as a self-taught artist, outside the academic and social European paradigm. Working predominately with found materials, collected in part from the numerous squats he’s inhabited over the past 17 years, Kenno’s art and life is a testament to the risks and instability of actual bohemianism- an existence confounded by socio-politics and the struggles of truly practicing what you preach.
A certain level of testosterone is necessarily implied by the drifter construct and, with the exception of one member of Artists Anonymous, all of the artists exhibited in Highway Child happen to be men. The machismo of the hitchhiker cliché, muscle car culture, biker gangs and infamous first-person narratives has afforded the road trip genre a distinctly masculine nature. Pete Wheeler’s painting invokes this precedent, his figurative representation reminiscent of the fallen Gods James Dean and Johnny Cash, while Maxime Ballesteros Biguet’s black and white photographs depict punks and rockers- reckless, deviant youth culture- interspersed with images of angelic Lolitas, temporary dwellings and majestic landscapes.
Warren Neidich’s slide series documents his journey across America that followed Kerouac’s classic On the Road almost half a century after its publication. The Road Trip, the quintessential American rite of passage, is rapidly becoming a modern myth. Almost extinct in the aftermath of the Iraq War and in the face of astronomical oil costs, this tradition has transformed from a democratic practice into a quasi-elitist activity, a digression manifested in Neidich’s series through his technique of cross processing slide film, which acidifies and distills its colors, emphasizing the nostalgia that now shrouds the memories of this vintage pastime. Nacnud Ogaviz’s sculptural tribute to this disappearing ritual is both a celebration of his nomadic childhood and a kind of sacrificial altar. Model cars, icons of this particular religion, are ironically placed in a Japanese bonsai landscape riddled with black pools, alluding to both the creator and would-be destroyer of this classic American creed.
These artists run the gamut in their respective connections to the overarching Highway Child theme, but the predominant unifier that connects each to the other, and hopefully to the viewer as well, is that we’ve all been more informed and inspired by our travels than by our origins, recalling the adage that it’s not the destination which matters, it’s the journey. To all practitioners of this philosophy, welcome home.
Highway child will be taking place as part of Gallery Mittwoch x2, a collection of 8 galleries spread
across one building, in a range of unique exhibition halls and project spaces located in Berlin’s newest
cultural center, The Friedrichshoehe, a former brewery at Landsberger Allee 54. Over 1500 square
meters of exhibition space will be open to the public, with works ranging from conceptual & intellectual
to raw aesthetics, along with a few classical pieces and expressed in every medium across the
spectrum of artistic practices, encompassing photography, installation, painting, drawing, sculpture
and performance. http://www.gallery-mittwoch.com/