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Press Release
January 11, 2002
Exhibitions:

Growing Up Absurd, curated by Jette Rudolph With Diana Cohen, Marcy Freedman, Liam Jones, Josephine Meckseper, Marcus Sendlinger, Phillip Zaiser.

WHEELING! – motorcycles in art, organized by Marcus Sendlinger, a Berlin artist

Amateur Wrestling – Part One by Brad Killam.

Exhibition Dates: January 11 - february 8, 2003
Regular Hours: Thursday - Saturday, 12:00 noon - 6:00 PM
Reception: Saturday, January 11, 7:00 - 9:00 PM

GROWING UP ABSURD a gallery exchange
Jette-Rudolph-Gallery, Berlin@POST-LA, Los Angeles, Under the auspice of the Villa Aurora Foundation Berlin- LA. Contact: www.post-la.com Tel: 213-622-8580, Fax: 213-488-3379

Marcy Freedman, born 1965 in Michigan, lives in Los Angeles/CA, USA
Installation, Objects, Drawings
Josephine Meckseper, born 1968 near Bremen, lives in New York
Concept Art
Marcus Sendlinger, born 1967 in K&Mac246;nigstein, lives in Berlin
Collage painting, Installation
Phillip Zaiser, born 1969 in Hannover, lives in Frankfurt
Room installation, objects
Diana Cohen, 1967 in California, lives in Los Angeles
Wall installation
Liam Jones, born 1976 in California, lives in northern California
Painting

The title "Growing-up Absurd" references the book by the politically ambitious educator Paul Goodman entitled Growing-Up Absurd: problems of youth in the organized society, published in 1965. The book puts forth the idea that a society not unlike the USA is both a paradise of consumerism as well as the fake, that roots in adaptation as a "confused, seduced, spoiled mass society, staggering from one megalomania into the next, not able to solve any of their problems.

In this context the selection of the artists for the group show Growing-up Absurd refers to the generation of people who were born in the sixties and grew up under a strong influence of American culture and its media. To them, the works of a former generation of artists serve as prototypes: incorporating strategies of irony and the fake, their works questioned the possibility of the originality of the image for the benefit of making its identity less opaque and to create an image for the public. In the wake of events such as September 11 the images the media creates within soaps, commercials or in video games begin to seem more and more absurd to younger generations. The wish for happiness as part of one's own existence becomes loud. The absurd can express itself in a spontaneous act of aggression, resignation or the escape in an inner world of dreams, as exemplary in the character of Mersault, the protagonist of Albert Camus' philosophical novel, The Stranger, (1953). Suddenly the functional base of a generally accepted political and economic system is questioned, especially the thought of globalization which gets lead by the West through controlling and its bringing its values in line.

The works in the group show Growing-up Absurd try to counter this standardized view of the world by a wide range of "singularities" in the sense of Jean Baudrillard. This means autonomous systems resisting the encroaching claims of the global so that the result would be a total breakdown. The concepts of the artists' lack of the mediation of a transcendental ideal cause reality and fiction to become mixed up, which brings the possibility of new ideas that show themselves in their works stamped by alternation and mutual destruction up to a total disappearance.

Marcy Freedman covers walls, floors and ceilings with her paintings and drawings that shine like candy and are connected with each other, using the aesthetics of beauty like a virus.
With her conceptual combinations of photography, drawings, paintings and text

Josephine Meckseper confronts political correctness with the inversion of the codes of glamour and the seduction by the media where politics are able to speak the language of pop. (e.g. she staged high-gloss photography showing models wearing necklaces with logos of German conservative parties.)

Marcus Sendlinger is concerned with the biker-cult, its aesthetic and history. His huge linear geometrical collage-paintings consist of a network of adhesive tape and other materials used to "tune" motorcycles. His installations and videos aim to show more of the context in which hotrod and biker meetings take place.

Phillip Zaiser constructs monumental room-installations and objects. They radiate the charm of a virtual morbid atmosphere of a stage because the artist generally chooses cheap materials and provisory elements. He seems to be stimulated by film scenes. His work transfers an intensive emotion struggling with the extremes of construction and deconstruction, and violence, reality and fiction.

In addition to the artists of the Jette Rudolph Gallery (Berlin) there are two artists from POST invited for the show Growing- up Absurd.

Through her wall-filling compositions of colored expanses of plastic Dianna Cohen is looking for connections to the language and design of minimal art. She follows the principles of montage to lead the recipient's eye to the parameters of staging.

Liam Jones also plays with scenery situations in his paintings by developing projections of houses that are under construction. Their complicated layers of scaffoldings made of wooden panels relay the impression of a mystery.


WHEELING! – motorcycles in art. Berlin/ Frankfurt a.m./ Los Angeles / Vienna/ London

Marcus Sendlinger, a Berlin artist, is the organizer of the show "Wheeling!" motorcycles in art which was presented in Berlin at Jette Rudolph Gallery (27.July- 31.August 2002) and at the Ausstellungsraum Natalie de Ligt in Frankfort (30.October- 22.November 2002).

Sendlinger's idea started out by inviting artist colleagues whoride motorbikes, rode motorbikes or had some kind of experience with them, or reflect this cult in some kind of way in their work made for the show. But the works are not necessarily concerning motorbikes. The idea of the exhibition is that it tours on and on from one city to another.

The exhibition WHEELING!- Krad Kult Tour has nothing in common with for example the idea of the Guggenheim Art of the Motorcycle exhibition which was a mere design representation of restored motorbikes without the spirit of riding or driving. Also it is not an exhibition which is only about motorcycle related art. Instead WHEELING! Krad Kult Tour is more about cult, identity, romanticism, sex, technology, fake freedom, etc…

The technique Sendlinger asked for is paperworks, prints, photographs, 1- 3 pieces, small- at least to avoid high transportation costs.

Post presents Amateur Wrestling – Part One by Brad Killam.

Killam has focused his project (begun in 2000) on the evolution of amateur wrestling in the United States since 1972. Pushing against the entertainment / sensationalist ruminations on professional wrestling (Cameron Jamie, Carlos Amorales) Killam is concerned with investigating the pedagogical underpinnings of the sport. Killam struggles with his own emotional ambiguity in response to its social and historical relevance as well as the overarching combative nature of wrestling; as his 10-year-old son engages in the sport.

This is Killam’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles since his collaborative debut (C.A.R.) in Los Angeles in 1997. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include: Waldkunstpfad – Darmstadt, Gallery 16 - San Francisco, Boom – Chicago, The Bower-San Antonio, Hyde Park Art Center - Chicago

Killam teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.