Collaborations

Delphi-preview

Delphi preview, 2020

Julia Klemm & Magdalena Waller
cavern studio, Munich

excert of the accompanying text by Dr. Tanja Klemm:
... The studio exhibition series with the paradoxical title “Delphi-Preview I-IV“, curated by artists Julia Klemm and Magdalena Waller, was a series of oracular consultations succeeding the initial phase of domestic isolation in the Corona pandemic. At the end of May 2020, exhibition houses were still closed, but small private events became possible. Within the framework of the regulations at that time (even if the springtime look at the apartment blocks of Reichenhallerstraße did not reveal it) by invitation of the artists, two people per hour could visit the exhibition setting. It was a setting that directly opened up behind the entrance door of the apartment building: after having taken a few steep steps down in a circle, the guests entered into a long windowless cellar corridor, where they encountered a familiar smell for places like this, with alternating glare and mild neon light.

Almost at the end of the aisle, a pedestal with surgical masks and disinfectants marked a spatial transition: pausing, habituated hand washing and face covering, first glances at the seven risograph prints on the opposite wall before entering the studio space. There, visitors stood in front of a whitewashed niche cut out of the studio workspace; a separate space, like a tabernacle or a temple cella. Two chairs were directed towards Magdalena Waller’s painting on the end wall, hieratically set into a symmetrical axis above a simple wooden bench. The painting showed reflecting silver plates, rhythmically arranged on the pictorial plane from which geometric figures seemed to emerge. In front of it, a compact iridescent object by Julia Klemm stood on a wooden rack, in an animal-like pose, its impasto colours gradients corresponding with colours in the painting. After two days, Julia Klemm and Magdalena Waller transformed the Delphic setting back into their workspace. In monthly cycles, an alternation of opening and closing, showing and hiding remained consistent alongside the unpredictable pandemic measures. After a short summer break, the last preview in October 2020 could be attended by ten people at once.
...

Migration

Priyal Kaliyug & Julia Klemm, 2018

raku fired ceramic, glaze
32 x 32 x 16 cm
Art Ichol Residency (IND)

I BURIED THE BIRD
IN A RODENT´S HOME.
SO INNOCENTLY,
I PLACED
DEATH IN LIFE.

poem by Priyal Kaliyug

Missed connections

Justin Lieberman & Julia Klemm, 2017

UNTITLED

with Justin Lieberman
Collage
Part One Cologne

The works of Klemm and Lieberman employ a particular sort of cast-off material; in Klemm’s case, second hand stuffed and ceramic animals, and in Lieberman’s, amateur landscape paintings bought in thrift stores. These are put into the service of abstraction by way of rearrangement. For the exhibition Missed Connections, their works have been brought back from the brink of this abstraction into a more narrative, domestic tableau. In addition, each tried their hand at creating from scratch the materials with which the other works, and in exchanging these, formed the basis for a pair of collaborative works.