www.032c.com 032c Bulletin NOVEMBER 2009 INDUSTRIAL LIGHT MAGIC 032c’s Berlin Decade w/ Thomas Demand, Cyprien Gaillard, Konstantin Grcic, Helmut Lang, Slavs and Tatars, and Patrick Li 24.11.–18.12.2009, Goethe Institut, Wyoming Building, NY, NY Opening Reception: Tuesday, 24.11.2009, 18:00 – 21:00 A seismic shift is occurring in visual culture and we are experiencing a never-before-seen degree of fluidity. 032c is at the heart of this disruption. From its origins on humble newspaper print to its high-profile cultural commentary, the Berlin culture biannual 032c has propelled itself into the  vanguard of publishing. According to The New York Times,  “The magazine fuses art and architecture, literature, urban studies and fashion in ways that can make one forget how depressing a visit to a newsstand has become.” On the occasion of its 10th anniversary, 032c will bring together a selection of its defining contributors for an interdisciplinary group exhibition,  mapping the magazine's varied and often unexpected content and activity through a series of mini case studies. The show combines artifacts related to past contributions to 032c, tangential works by contributors that have shaped the ideas and aesthetic of the magazine, and new works  produced specifically for the exhibition. The show thus posits a multi-layered engagement between a magazine and its content—an interrogation of the mutable identities and functions of editors and contributors. The result is a collaboration in which the words, images, and structures that create the content of the magazine generate new forms in an exhibition space. Helmut Lang For the past five years, nearly 10,000 items from Helmut Lang’s career have been photographed and archived, generating a visual chronicle of the designer’s nearly three-decade-long role at the crossroads of fashion and art. From this comprehensive archive, 3,000 images were selected and catalogued in the form of a stop-motion video titled ARCHIVE– hl-art archive, 1986–2005, which premiered at 032c’s exhibition space in Berlin in September 2008. Since the 1980s, Helmut Lang has been known for his pared-down and deconstructivist approach to clothing design, through which he took sharp silhouettes and cutting edge fabrics to a new level of refined minimalism. Archive reveals his process of dismantling: cummerbunds morph into ties, which in turn melt into elbow-length gloves; shirts and tank tops are reduced to their pure, skeletal forms; skirts are stripped bare to single bands of fabric. Each category of clothing is represented and then reduced to its architectural core, creating a narrative of “simplicity as complexity distilled,” as Lang himself has noted. Helmut Lang was the original instigator for 032c’s interest in fashion, and has subsequently been featured in the magazine on multiple levels: as a topic for content, a stockist in fashion editorials, and an advertiser. Thomas Demand An internationally acclaimed Berlin-based artist, and the topic 032c's current 40-page cover dossier, Thomas Demand is both a contributor and source of critical feedback for the magazine. Demand’s triptych of the Lamborghini Gallardo was originally commissioned for 032c’s winter 2005–06 issue, “True Zeitgenossenschaft,” which sought to counter that anti-modernist tendency towards the retro and phobia of the present. In doing so, 032c turned to ten phenomena (e.g., the Lamborghini Gallardo) that have generated new forms and models in a truly contemporary way. In this series of images, Demand reverses the design process of the Gallardo with his celebrated modus operandi: instead of progressing from a two-dimensional drawing to a three-dimensional model to, eventually, an automobile, he reconstructs the car out of paper and photographs it, creating a visual deconstruction of its lines and surfaces. It is an attempt to comprehend the organization of an object whose form bears no reference to the past—Lamborghini, founded in 1963, relies entirely on the radical modernity of its product. Slavs and Tatars Slavs and Tatars' Resist Resisting God (2009) employs a craft that addresses the mysticism extolled by the revolutionary ideology of Tehran in 1979: the mirror mosaic. Found in Shi’ite shrines and across the former royal residencies of Iran, the mirror mosaic exemplifies the various religious and cultural means utilized historically by Iranians to carve out an identity distinct from that of the Arabs. While the Arab conquests of the 7th century brought not only Islam, but also the highly geometric patterns of Islamic decorative art to the region, the Persians insisted on executing them in a more outlandish, precious manner, using mirrors instead of wood or ceramics. A four-person arts collective based in Moscow, Brussels, and Cambridge (UK), Slavs and Tatars is a faction of polemics and intimacies devoted to a geographical area east of the Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China, known as Eurasia. An 032c contributor since 2006, the group has work in the permanent collection of the MoMA, New York, and has held solo exhibitions in New York, Berlin, and Brussels. 79/89/09, their most recent project for the magazine, is an exploration of some of the most impactful dates of the 20th century since the Russian Revolution of 1917, including the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. Konstantin Grcic Inspired by the intricate systems of stage lighting, Konstantin Grcic created Lunar in 2008, an industrial lighting rig used to illuminate large spaces with an indefinite number of light sources and combinations. Comprised of a simple tubular frame that accommodates technical lighting fixtures as well as classical designs, including the Achille Castiglioni Taraxacum 88 lamp (1988) as a centerpiece, Lunar embodies 032c’s maxim of finding the new in the old, and the old in the new. Grcic has been an integral figure in 032c’s development, both as a contributor and as an industrial designer. In addition to conducting interviews for the magazine with some of design’s leading personalities, Grcic has designed and curated exhibitions in 032c’s workshop in Berlin, exemplifying the shifting identities and versatility of the magazine’s collaborators. Cyprien Gaillard Cyprien Gaillard’s video The Lake Arches (2007) is a collision between youthful recreation and modernism. Set against Ricardo Bofill’s 1986 housing projects outside of Paris, Gaillard sets out to memorialize the architecture’s failed idyllic agenda by having two friends swim heroically toward the pier-like complex. But as one swimmer unexpectedly smashes his face against the concrete bottom and breaks his nose, he becomes the human embodiment of the violence that occurs at the intersection of architecture and landscape, man and nature. Gaillard was featured in 032c in 2007 as an emerging artist whose work is a powerful protest against the forces of forgetting. Congruent with the magazine’s efforts to provoke the present by confronting the past, Gaillard explores and updates architectural ruins to understand how history’s solutions so often become future sources of agitation. Patrick Li For this series of screen-printed posters, designer Patrick Li was given complete carte blanche to re-envision every 032c cover from the course of the past decade. With eighteen covers, each marked by a particular zeitgeist, Li proposes a retrospective of the magazine’s visual history while rewriting its very constitution from an outsider’s perspective. As the founder of one of New York’s most prominent art direction and design studios, Li, Inc., Li has collaborated with some of the city’s leading art institutions and fashion brands, and has thus emblematized its cultural character. Having Li annotate 032c’s visual identity not only collides two distinct graphic approaches, but also re-focuses the exhibition’s content through a contextual New York perspective. Location: Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building 5 East 3rd Street (at Bowery) - Google Maps New York, NY 10003 www.goethe.de/wyomingbuilding Tel.: +1 (212) 439-8700 Closest Subway: 6 at Bleecker Street Admission is free. The Goethe-Institut New York is a branch of the Federal Republic of Germany's global cultural institute, established to promote the study of German and German culture abroad, encourage international cultural exchange, and provide information on Germany's culture, society, and politics. The Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building, its new event space, is a cultural venue in the heart of New York's vibrant downtown arts scene. www.032c.com