ANNIKA ERIKSSON
SHOP FRONT COHERENCE
10.09.2011 – 21.10.2011

Opening: Friday, 09 September 2011, 5 – 9 pm

click the picture to launch gallery

 

On the occasion of the opening of its new space on Potsdamer Straße, Krome Gallery presents „Shop Front Coherence“, a project by Annika Eriksson. This context sensitive work reacts to the situation of Potsdamer Straße and its surrounding neighborhood, dealing with its changing processes and ideas of expectation.

Annika Eriksson’s work is associated with socially-engaged and site-specific practice dealing with everyday situations and collective actions. Much of her work, mainly photographs, videos or film installations, concern the urban and public space. 

Annika Eriksson’s work has been exhibited worldwide including the DAAD Berlin (2010), the Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin (2010), the Hayward Gallery, London (2010), the Venice Biennale (2005), the Kunstverein München (2003), and the Biennale de Sao Paulo (2002). She is currently working on a solo show at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart.

The project is curated by Katharina Krawczyk.

 

In conversation with Annika Eriksson

 

KATHARINA KRAWCZYK In many of your pieces you invite people from different professions to participate in your work. For „Shop Front Coherence“ you invited a professional decorator to make a shop front for an art gallery. What does it mean to you to delegate a part of the work to someone else?

ANNIKA ERIKSSON It depends on the project. But generally I invite people because I am interested in their knowledge of a certain area. In these works the participants are invited with a suggestion from my side. There is always a strict framework to the projects. These works are not collaborations, they are suggestions, and that distinction is very important for me. Once the framework is established I don’t interfere with how the participants choose to act or what they create. In this process, it is not possible to make mistakes. There are sometimes surprises but those are a bonus. So in one way I do control the situation and in another way I do not, I just have to accept the outcome. I like this way of letting go once everything is set. My process is always the same: after I have the concept, I just follow the process that I have started. I like very much the way Sol LeWitt describes the way he works: “The idea becomes the machine that makes the art“.

KK And how does this relate to „Shop Front Coherence“?

AE In this piece I hired a professional that created the shop window of the gallery as to follow a similar aesthetic of other displays on Potsdamer Straße. It had to be as realistic as possible.

KK The title of your project for the Krome Gallery is „Shop Front Coherence“. What does coherence refer to?

AE The piece relates to this time of transition that we see very clearly in Berlin, the gentrification process is extremely aggressive. At the moment, the area around Potsdamer Straße is in some kind of 'in between situation' where you find a few up market galleries but still they look rather displaced among the shops and 'Kneipen' that have been there for years. The shop window of the gallery physically reaches out on the pavement, almost divided from the gallery. And the „Shop Front Coherence“ is in coherence with the street.

KK For your recent performance „Hannah Arendt Band“ you invited a young punk-rock band to perform their own music under the title of the philosophers’ name. Your work deals often with our expectations. What you see is not necessarily what you get. What about this discrepancy in „Shop Front Coherence“? 

AE The pieces that I make regarding expectations often relate to expectations within the art world. They are often displacements in various ways, because they are placed where they don’t belong. They both refer to and change the context in which they are placed. But in this case the displacement looks different: the gallery becomes what is displaced. An art audience does not expect that kind of shop front from a contemporary gallery so, as art the piece is displaced, but as shop front it displaces the gallery.

 

The shop front is decorated by Heike Belgert from Art Window.