“The White Male Complex, No.2″ is a winter show. It is fair to assume that in February it will still be dark and cold in Berlin. It is also the time for advertising underwear in public spaces which bombard us with images of femininity and masculinity from the fashion world.
Size does matter – we learn that from advertisement banners around the globe. Just recently one could admire a much larger than life Christy Turlington on Berlin’s Alexanderplatz – dizzyingly high up and in the freezing cold. Images like those are such an imposition on the viewer!
The artist Thomas “Kelvin“ Eller deals with such impertinence. For two weeks only a scarcely clad figure, 3 meters tall and 10 meters long, will be on display (enduring the cold) at Schau Fenster, on Berlin’s Moritzplatz. The White Male Complex, No.2 is part of a series of exhibitions conceived of by Thomas Eller.
Thomas Eller is a man of possibilities and a mediator of vantage points. He is a veritable “renaissance man” and lives out his various interests in art and culture between New York and Berlin. With photographic means applied onto the sculptural realm he opens up spaces that force us to reconsider. He enjoys “speeding up” entire buildings or playing chess with himself.
Questions to Thomas Eller by Eva Gravayat:
What was the first part of the exhibition series “The White Male Complex, No.1″ and where was it presented ?
The first part of the exhibition series “The White Male Complex” took place last October at SAVVY contemporary, Berlin’s foremost place for art from Africa in dialogue with the rest of the world. It seemed more than appropriate to start at a place like that. The director of SAVVY, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, understood the gesture really well and supported it. To present the contested notion of white male identity at a place like SAVVY was meant to open a dialogue at eye level. The exhibition included some of the West’s most irritable and self-conscious artists like Bruce Nauman and Mike Kelly, alongside younger artists from Berlin and New York. The basic idea was, as Kelefa Sanneh, a music critic for the New Yorker magazine put it: “Yes, whiteness is a social construct, and not … a biological essence – but then so, too, is every collective identity. It’s getting easier to talk about “white culture”, maybe even white politics… . In the Obama era – the Tea Party era – whiteness is easier to see than ever before, which means it’s less readily taken for granted. If invisibility is power, then whiteness is a little less powerful than it used to be.”
Is the exhibition series « The White Male Complex » exhibited only in Berlin or could it be presented in other cities ?
I believe the discussion about the social construction of white masculinity is prevalent not only in Berlin. In fact it is a global issue. But as it is, every region of the world has a different perspective on the issue. Therefore future exhibitions will have to find appropriate solutions to deal with new contexts.
What is your opinion about the image in the city of Berlin’s public space ?
The question of image in public space is fraught with power issues. Big advertisement banners and posters in cities in the West pretty much are significant of the capital interests that are competing for attention. Until not too long ago this phenomenon was virtually unknown in cities in the East, where images in public space were reserved for people in power. Traditionally public space was inhabited by religious or mythological figures only. So until today public space is charged with importance and every face that appears there seems to either try to sell or convince you of something.
The history of power and of the public image is so intertwined that we still have problems “exorcizing” them. The current exhibition “The White Male Complex, No.2” is an attempt at appropriating public space for explicitly particular use. Joseph Beuys once said: “Jeder Mensch ein Künstler.” With the installation at Schau Fenster I am trying to reverse that: “Jeder Künstler ein Mensch!”
In a way that is also an attempt at converting the vertical rhetoric of power into a “horizontal” dialog, where private and public spaces conflate. Berlin is an excellent place for that.
You are working between New York and Berlin, two main international places for art and culture. What would you say is different regarding image in public space between New York and Berlin ?
In New York public space is much more capitalized on than here in Berlin where much stricter policies apply. The visual presence of images in public spaces in New York is so overwhelming that one would almost have no hope for artistic interventions in the city. However exactly that created the graffiti movement in the 70s and 80s and until today the artistic quality of murals in New York is on average much higher than here in Berlin. Maybe also because repression was so much stricter. You’d go to jail just for owning spray cans …
The biggest difference though is that of very different notions of what is considered private vs. public. It is much easier to be “private in public” in Berlin than in NY. It starts not only with the fact that you could never walk in the streets of NYC with an open bottle of beer in your hand. In New York you are private when your private – the rest is public. Germans don’t understand that and often confuse the two, which has to do with our romantic ideas of authenticity.
The exhibition “The White Male Complex, No.2″ will be presented for two weeks only. Temporary art in temporary places was / is often used as a definition for Berlin’s vivid culture. You have been in 2008-2009 managing director of Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin. What do you think about the idea of ‘temporary’ for Berlin’s city, inhabitants and culture ?
Nothing is forever really and power lies in institutions. Power wants to be forever, but new people and new desires are born ever day. This is a contradiction that runs through all human organizations. If institutions don’t change over time, there will be revolutions. Berlin has been quite good in recent years at adapting to new “desires”. However I sometimes just wish that the city and its representatives would be more ambitious. Instead of only a laissez-faire attitude towards new things, a bit more active support for the tremendous creative potential of the good people in the city would be the right thing to do.
The White Male Complex, No.2
Thomas Kelvin Eller
February 17th – March 3rd, 2013
Schau Fenster, Schauraum für aktuelle Kunst
Lobeckstrasse 30-35
10969 Berlin
Germany
