Untitled (One night in my studio: the city of Berlin...)
Mischa Leinkauf
Thursday, August 20, 2020
viewable online at www.signsandsymbols.art
Wermke/Leinkauf, Eclipse, 2015
Is there "freedom" in urban spaces that are hidden from our everyday view? For artists & allies III, Mischa Leinkauf takes the audience on a personal video journey of his studio: the city of Berlin. Follow the artist to one of Berlins hidden architectural treasure on Thursday, August 20.
“There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.” – Albert Camus
You cannot escape the absurd and every human being finds itself in an absurd situation that lies in the tension between the absurdity of the world on the one hand and the human longing for meaning or meaningful action on the other. There are three stages in dealing with absurdity: realization, adoption and revolt. Following Albert Camus and his essay "The Myth of Sisyphus," only in the revolt against the absurd, you might realize yourself and find freedom.
Berlin born and based artist mischa leinkauf deals with the hidden possibilities of urban environments and various kinds of limitations of spaces through borders, rules and architecture. Through interventions in quasi-natural systems of order, he provokes situations that create temporary confusion and open up spaces for a possible recoding. His actions are subversive antics in the unruly and playful Debordian tradition of the dérive, but here the experiential immediacy and spontaneity is counterbalanced by a conceptual framework of precise planning and execution. Leinkauf is part of the artist duo Wermke/Leinkauf and has received numerous awards worldwide and exhibited internationally at venues such as Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo Japan, Helsinki Art Museum, Moderna Museet Stockholm, ZKM Karlsruhe, Kunstmuseum Bonn and Manifesta 11.
