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Notagallery is pleased to present “Unexpected Unpredictability”, Kedimari’s first solo exhibition at Notagallery, following her participation in the 2023 group exhibition, "Ambivalent."
In Kedimari’s enigmatic and vibrant paintings, reality meets the extraordinary through vivid colors and unique forms. Her works, deeply influenced by her Transylvanian roots and Expressionism, picture the emotional landscapes and complexities of human experience. With a rich color palette of deep indigos, fiery reds, and bold yellows, she explores themes of inner turmoil, cultural diversity, and the primal aspects of human nature: fear, desire, and conflict.
Kedimari's "Unexpected Unpredictability" showcases the abundant unpredictability inherent in everyday life and interactions, illuminating the astonishment found in each color, situation, and gesture. In an era marked by diminishing connections and socialization, Kedimari captures the essence of seemingly mundane everyday activities.
Each artwork carries a snapshot of a moment, a singular act in the drama of human existence where individuals, despite their distinct personas, resonate in shared emotions.
Through Kedimari's eyes the viewers are encouraged to question and reinterpret the scenes of their everyday lives. The exhibition encourages us all to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, to see the world anew, and to embrace the unpredictable flow of human experience.
Vernissage on RSVP only : https://www.tickettailor.com/events/notagallery/1169980
Program Artists: Collective Gabriela Germany, Ban Ying shelter house and consultant service for migrant women, Raksa Seelapan (with Fah Passion-Asasu, Liad Hussein Kantoworicz), Analie Gepulanin Neiteler & Anika Baluran Schäfer, Sine Plambech & Sommai Molbaek, Stefanos Tai, Susanne Wycisk, Vijitra Kunawut
Curated by Sarnt Utamachote as part of the exhibition program POLY 2024 at Galerie Wedding
In collaboration with Week Against Racism, Thaispora Podcast, Sinema Transtopia, Ban Ying Berlin and Gabriela Germany
What is care, if turned away from the customers, back to the providers themselves?
The project departs from the extremely violent cliché images that are projected on especially Thai and Filipina women and queer bodies. Some of us have been asked »are you married to a German guy? « during our visa application, some have been called »women from the catalogue«, some »prostitute«, some »maids«. These racist words triggered us, collective un.thai.tled, to dig deeper into such histories and, unfortunately, the realities of our »sisters and aunties«. A research grant by Akademie der Künste in 2022 therefore allows us to continue our trajectory from previous engagement with the Thai community in Preußenpark (»Thai Park«, Berlin). The result is the exhibition and programme IN NOBODY’S SERVICE, as part of the POLY programme of Galerie Wedding, focusing on a multidisciplinary polysemic approach to history writing, labour, love, and care in contemporary arts practice.
Migration histories from Thailand and Philippines to the West have been shaped by American influences and colonisation in the region and entangled the white colonisers’ military bases and their desires with the conditions of gendered migration after. With West Germany’s parallel interests in tourism and developing labour exchanges – of sex, care and the reproductive industry, it gave birth to, for example, the marriage agencies in Berlin (that linked husband and wife together), or cheap maid agencies across developing countries, the brothels and massage salons in Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg. Here our bodies have been rendered to mere »providers« – resulting in questions like the ones posed at the visa application centre.
Are we »that kind of woman«?
At the same time, we also recognise that these oppressive spaces can be subverted into places of care, comfort, and knowledge. This project aims to allow such a past now entangled in our present to be our material for artistic collaboration with our »sisters and aunties«. Highlighting the non-biological kinship and relationality, we attempt to focus on the proximity of common struggles and empathy that arose. De-stigmatizing this service sector (including sexwork) and its negative connotations on us, we take this as a chance to reclaim our rights to healing and temporal liberation.
When »that kind« and »this kind« come together, then we are unbeatable.
Via the intersection of class, gender, sexuality, and – if we may say – dreams, IN NOBODY’S SERVICE recognises the carved-out realities beyond the realms of their white husbands or social conditions – now available for us, now in nobody’s service.
In the exhibition WILD CLAIMS we arre presenting paintings and watercolours by Berlin artist Tanja Selzer from 8 March 2024. By overlaying images from mass media and film stills with her own feelings, she creates new images that express freedom, closeness to nature, eroticism and individuality, but also vulnerability. Real and fabulous creatures want to seduce the viewer to lead a free and self-determined life in a safe place.
Freedom, individuality and self-determination of each individual are an important part of our lives, even if we live in times in which tolerance and understanding for those who think and live differently is decreasing and is met with increasing aggression. In art, nudity as an expression of human naturalness is also a metaphor for truth; nevertheless – or precisely because of this – such images are increasingly not tolerated due to supposed “hurt feelings” and are censored or even banned in social media, such as the depiction of Michelangelo’s David in Dubai, Florida or even in Scotland.
Tanja Selzer rejects this prudery and restriction of freedom and defies it. Like her fellow artists Elisabeth Peyton and Cecily Brown, she is inspired by images from the mass media and film stills, which in Tanja Selzer’s case also include pornographic films that are considered to be the domain of men. She is interested in the emotional content of these models and creates free spaces in her pictures in order to lead an independent and self-determined life in safe places. Tanja Selzer’s oil paintings and watercolours reflect longings and desires like dreamy memories and photographs that have never been taken, moments in which the feeling of freedom is particularly pronounced – reality and dream merge and form memories, associations and expectations in the viewer, as can also be found in the works of Marlene Dumas.
Unlike in the legendary Venusberg motif, where the Roman goddess of love, erotic desire and beauty lures people into the mountain with nymphs and mermaids in order to lead a sinful life and thus fall victim to damnation, or as with Eric Fischl, whose pictures of naked people are often characterised by fears and constraints, Tanja Selzer plays lightly and ironically with her motifs; no one is denounced or condemned. Rather, she claims that everyone can live their individual freedom without disapproval in the defined space, whether unobserved naked on the beach (Playing Venus) or dancing around a fire (Bonfire), making love in the forest (Lovecats, Somewhere only we know), enraptured by a forest lake (Flying) or on the back of a horse (Foam Horse, Horsy).
With effortless, fluid and lightly applied colours, the artist playfully underlines the seriousness of her works.
Galerie Sara Lily Perez is thrilled to announce the opening of International Women's Month; with ''Grace and Valor'' This showcase, features the works of Anne Torpe, Julia Mann, Rubica von Streng, and Solomiya Zelensca;drawing inspiration from the rich tapestry of female archetypes, from the nurturing warmth of the mother to the fierce warrior spirit of the goddess. It pays homage to the complexity of female roles and identities, transcending time and culture to highlight the universal themes of strength, resilience, and elegance. The exhibition is a testament to the power of art to evoke empathy, challenge stereotypes, and celebrate the diversity and richness of the female experience.
On platforms where anyone can have a voice, and in a time when anyone can be a star, our attachments and dependencies to the content of our screens have never been more real. Content is everywhere. Content is Queen. Content is an endless stream of non-stop corporate cringe, toxic masculinity, cutified warfare, holistic health advice, sexualised bodies, and junk. In an economy of scrolling, swiping, and clicking, bed-rooms act as studios, bathrooms are stages, and aspirations mingle with propaganda through cycles of contradictory logics of capital and emotions. Life is increasingly content – but do we consume content or does content consume us?
Taking an already extinct viral video as a starting point, this is perfect, perfect, perfect explores how this relentless pursuit of digital attention and monetisation of content has transformed the way we consume, perceive, and engage with the world. Distraction, once a consequence, has become central to our algorithm-mediated realities – shaping language, identities, behaviour, and action. How does the emotional and environmental footprint of
distraction act in service of the status quo and shape the dynamics of power around us?
Confronting how stories are crafted, commerce is lived, and the never-ending trail of distraction, the artists in the exhibition peel back this familiar shiny surface of our screens. By deconstructing the hyperbolic and sensational images and narratives that are generated, as well as the fight, flight or freeze responses that they spawn, this is perfect, perfect, perfect challenges our relationship to our screens.
Bettina Sellmann's painting oscillates between the Baroque/Rococo period and the present day. She updates the aesthetics of the Baroque and Rococo periods by incorporating manga aesthetics, thus challenging cultural, gender-specific and social norms as well as the conventions of art history.
The Baroque era - a period in which the utmost importance was placed on outward appearance and representation - shows great parallels to today's dictates of self-optimization in life and social media. The cultural markers of the Baroque appear in Sellmann's work as metaphors for the present.
However, she uses the conventions of art history to dissolve the individuals depicted in translucent color gradients of intense color. The result is translucent negative images immersed in explosions of color. Her paintings are "see-through versions" of old masters, as Ann Wilson Lloyd (from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston) defines them: "Inspired by art historical imagery, Bettina Sellmann creates 'see-through versions' of Old Master paintings." * What becomes visible is the fragility of external appearances and the inner vulnerability of the subjects. Authenticity is created through the revelation of fiction. Perfect surfaces melt and transform in the search for an apparent essence. Perhaps the essence lies precisely in their dissolution.
Sellmann often fuses the formal language of the Baroque with a Kidult and Kawaii-inspired visual language. The omnipresent kidult and manga culture feeds above all on our search for innocence and originality. And here, too, everything is fiction: under capitalist production conditions, childishness and propagated innocence become a template and turn into their opposite - manipulative strategies for selling products.
This aspect is often ironically adapted or satirized in the visual arts. The disconcerting aspect of Sellmann's work, however, is that it makes no use of redeeming irony. For her, this is a new twist in the tradition of the (exclusively male) "bad painting" of the 1980s/1990s. While this movement was about breaking as many taboos as possible, the taboo of the "cute" or even "feminine" was always upheld - a contradiction that for her always stood in blatant contradiction to the movement's proclaimed striving for freedom. She therefore sees her position not least as "Bad Painting" 2.0 - very much in the spirit of Annekathrin Kohout when she speaks of "Cute Empowerment", which calls previous stereotypes into question.
Bettina Sellmann deliberately uses the aesthetics of pastel-colored baroque or kawaii figures, which previously served a clichéd and discriminatory attribution, and makes prejudices transparent through this affirmation. The shift in perspective makes the improbable credible and puts up for discussion: How much can the sweet and elegant be exhausted without resorting to irony? To what extent can sweetness convey meaning and remain sweet at the same time? To what extent can sweetness be critical without ceasing to be sweet?
Sellmann's painting thus tests the usual parameters of perception of contemporary aesthetics and art.
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