PLANNING FOR SALON III ON 22.01.2012

PARTICIPATING GUESTS:
KATE HERS
LATEFA WIERSCH
NICOLAS MANENTI
MELISSA STECKBAUER
NICHOLAS KASHIAN


PARTICIPATING HOSTS:

ALEXINE CHANEL
PIERRE GRANOUX
JULIEN GRENIER 
JOAO GRIDFONTE
SARA-LENA MAIERHOFER

ALSO PRESENT,
ROLAND MOREAU, PHOTOGRAPHER

NICHOLAS KASHIAN

Nicholas Kashian was born in Bloomington, IL in 1980, where he lived until the age of 18.  During this time he was exposed to many artists’ work owing to the fact that his father is a photographer, and was, in former times, a painter and performance artist.  This allowed Kashian the opportunity to become an assistant to, and acquainted with, the work of his father’s friends.  Nicholas attended Arizona State University from 1999 to 2003 where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with concentrations in painting, drawing, printmaking and collage.  The artist then moved to Chicago, IL, and after four and a half years was given the opportunity to attend graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he graduated with an MFA in 2009.  Shortly thereafter Kashian left Chicago and eventually landed in Berlin, where he currently lives.

Kashian believes that he is a painter by design, but actually works in many ways and with many materials, including a heavy dose of drawing and collage work, as well as found object manipulations and sculpture. His work is sometimes characterized by the inclination to arrive at complicated solutions to simple problems.  Also, his tendency is to confuse recklessness for courage in the studio, often resulting in an overabundance of ill-planned and/or half-finished projects.   Formally, his investigations are probing the still-confused boundary between figuration and abstraction, or finding ways to validate both without their knowing.
nicholaskashian.com

NICOLAS MANENTI

Nicolas Manenti (* Albertville/F, 1980) 

studied at the ecole nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon in which he graduated in 2004. He lives and works in Berlin/D since 2005.

Manenti constantly tries to find escape in absurdity and paradoxical behaviour through repetitive, restraining tasks or compulsive and maniacal acts. He confronts elements of reality with their own image, thus creating a plot of uncontrolled nonsense in domesticated spaces that highlights the permanent anxiety behind their secure appearances.

LATEFA WIERSCH

Latefa Wiersch lives and works in Berlin and Leipzig.

Her work is about the ephemerality of the body. Found pieces of furniture and objects which relate to the human body are transformed into hybrid sounding boxes overgrown with soft garments. They inspire feelings that fluctuate between intimacy and distance. The second hand objects bear traces of their past user in the shape of holes, marks, scratches, spots. By going into the installations, and thus becoming a part of their composition, the viewer inadvertently is framed as an intruder of the private realm of a person, who is absent, but whose life has been left behind for everyone to see.

After studying musicology and literature at the Ruhr-University Bochum Latefa Wiersch graduated a Design course (Diploma) from the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld in 2006 and a Diploma in Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts in 2011.

She recently exhibited at Galerie Adler, Frankfurt am Main, Skulpturenpark Berlin-Zentrum, Kunstsammlungen Augsburg, Kunstverein Gelsenkirchen, Galerie Live in Your Head, Genf and Kunsthalle Bielefeld.

Apart from her individual work she is also involved in collaborative projects and exhibitions in Berlin.

www.galerieadler.com

KATE HERS

kate hers is a visual artist who works multi and interdisciplinary, project and process based. Her practice ranges from symbolic landscape painting, performative narrative video, scientific food processes, cultural artifact-like objects, and social intervention - but explores consistent, intertwining themes: transnationalism, language as a site of ruptured identity, and the post-colonial and spiritual Other. She has shown her work in museums, galleries, film/video festivals and alternative spaces in Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America. Her most recent project, Dr. Rhee's Kimtschi Shop, debuted at Das Gift in Berlin and she is currently working on the second part of The German Project, an interactive art and social intervention which uses language as a medium to explore transnational identity. kate hers was born in Seoul, raised in Detroit, and has lived in 36 different homes in 7 cities and currently lives in Berlin. See more at www.estherka.com

MELISSA STECKBAUER

Melissa Steckbauer is a visual artist and writer based in Berlin. She studied art history at Utrecht University and fine arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she received her BFA. She has had solo shows in Berlin, Paris, Italy and Japan, been included in group shows in Tokyo, Brussels and Belgrade and is represented by Van der Stegen Gallery in Paris. Steckbauer has upcoming shows in 2012 in Rotterdam, Berlin and Livorno. 

www.melissasteckbauer.com