Porcino is an ephemeral gallery space at ChertLüdde founded by David Horvitz in 2013. It was originally located inside the former Chert Galerie on Skalitzestr. 68 and has since moved with the gallery at Hauptstraße 18.
PAST
Wera Bet
Sprawa Kobieca
ChertLüdde Books, Berlin
10 – 17 December 2022
What do we see? What do we notice? All around the city, we glimpse at posters and advertisements, clues of larger stories. Located on the facade of the ChertLüdde entrance and the mushroom-shaped advertisement cylinder outside the gallery, Wera Bet’s (Bydgoszcz, Poland, 1987) public intervention Sprawa Kobieca encourages viewers to interact with these stories by inviting them to rip down her work, take it home, and live with it.
These posters will eventually dwindle in number until the installation is completely gone, hibernating as single ephemera distributed across the city. Presented as part of the transient gallery space Porcino, founded by David Horvitz in 2013, the project echoes the very nature of the exhibition space – blooming once and then moving like spores swiftly to its next location.
Made of three different poster designs that multiply across the space, these works represent Bet’s practice. Often considering action and reaction on a cognitive level, the elements seen in Bet’s work branch out like the nervous and endocrine systems through human and nonhuman subjects. People, snails, and plant life all clustered within her borders, spreading and extending through paint and pencil. Objects from domestic scenes appear regularly as well, with public attention falling onto a private eye.
The translation of the title, Sprawa Kobieca, is muddy, the linguistic shift from Polish sprawling with interpretations, meaning at the same time ‘Women’s Case,’ ‘Women’s Issue,’ and ‘Women’s Business.’ Taking inspiration from Poland’s golden age of posters in the 1960s, and the designers’ distinct use of symbolism and folklore, the posters are all connected to the stories that take root in and reflect social history.
Featuring a large vacuum, the first poster made in this series alludes directly to the story of Rita Gorgonowa, a woman who immigrated to (what was then) Poland. Later charged with murder in 1932 despite the absence of any concrete evidence, her story became a national media affair and traveled widely as gossip, as hypotheses. With elements of Gorgonowa’s story penetrating all three posters, the installation traces how (mis)information spreads, sprouting like clovers through concealed networks of knowledge and figuration.
Simultaneous to this project, a poetry reading from Mycoglossia by Fiona Glen (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1995) and Nina Hanz (Richmond, USA, 1996) will occur within the ChertLüdde bookstore. Embodying the many voices of mushrooms, they present fungi as both healers and destroyers, plague and nurture, horror or hope. The co-presentation by Glen and Hanz entangles with the cohabitation occurring in cities, homes and across borders and countries, voicing similar rhizomatic patterns as Bet’s artistic intervention.
With Support by Dezentrale Kulturarbeit – Tempelhof-Schöneberg.
Yorgos Stamkopoulos
30 April – 30 September 2021
Lesson n. 4, David Horvitz – One Day exhibition
February 21st, 2021
As part of Sunday Open Lights On! Organised by Index Berlin
Lesson n. 4 is part of the ongoing exhibition – l e s s o n s – at Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wiesbaden
Visitors are invited to participate, you can send your images to david.horvitz@kunstverein-wiesbaden.de
David Horvitz
– l e s s o n s –
Until May 31, 2021, Nassauischer Kunstverein, Wilhelmstraße 15, 65185 Wiesbaden, Germany.
You are welcome to participate in this exhibition by engaging with the lessons. Documentation that is mailed to Nassauischer Kunstverein will be added to the exhibition until the closing date. Any form of documentation will be accepted: photographs, drawings, writings, paintings, sculpture, sounds, digital files, video, postcards, mail works, etc… Include your childrens’ name and your name if you would like to be credited. Or submit anonymously. Everything received will be exhibited and will stay together for future exhibitions. No returns. Works by adult children will be accepted.
“Schools in Los Angeles have been closed for almost a year now, and I have been spending more time with my five year old daughter. In this time spent together we created a curriculum of weekly lessons to work on or contemplate. These lessons (and their documentation) are also the material for an exhibition currently at Wiesbaden Kunstverein. Here was one of the activities from a few months ago. If your child (or you, adult children are welcome to participate) completes this prompt, please send the photograph to david.horvitz@kunstverein-wiesbaden.de and we will print it out and install it in the exhibition in Wiesbaden” (David Horvitz)
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Constantinos Taliotis
Opening reception 13th September 2019, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Nona Inescu
Acumen
Opening reception Friday 26th April 2019, 6:00 – 9:00. Preview 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
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Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld
En Trance
Opening reception 9th February 2019, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Who doesn’t know the door to the other world? One of those mysterious doors, which leads into the unknown, could be Porcino, the project space parasitically attached to the Gallery ChertLüdde, by just being a door.
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Tarik Kiswanson
Haytham
Opening reception 22nd September 2018, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
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Christine Sun Kim
Opening reception Friday 27th April 2018, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
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Gonçalo Sena
“Porous Structures”
with a contribution by Margarida Mendes
Opening reception: 10th February 2018, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
arquitecturas de mel
perecem ao luar
embrumada a noite
desliza
pelos cantos do mundo
ao fundo
uma maré em deslace
a raiz flui sem ser
oculta-se
transmuta-se.
metamorfoses em eito,
gestos inacabados.
o deleite da mão
traz o inferno do outro.
no evento glaciar
urgem tormentos de vento
deformam-se casas de mel
extiguem-se os insectos multiplicados
desorientados.
o poder cibernético da consciência
esvai-se num segundo de luz
Margarida Mendes
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Krysten Cunningham
Pink Star
Opening reception: Friday 24th November, 2017, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
In order to arrive at the star shape I observed a folded a triangular sheet of paper in space. The geometrical flattening of that form is actually a five-sided polygon. Then I repeated and overlapped the polygon shape 4 times overlapping them in a concentric circle to arrive at the star. The idea for the triangle originates in Lygia Clark’s “casulo” artworks. I recently executed much larger “lawn drawings” in the central gardens at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
Krysten Cunningham
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Gaia Fugazza
Gatherer Hardwiring
Opening reception: Friday 15th September, 2017, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Wisdom teeth to substitute
The old molars of young hunters
These four now crowd jaws
That sips on power juices
A brain excited by puzzle pieces
Actually longing for forest gifts
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Anna M. Szaflarski
Tired of Waiting
Curated by Imke Kannegiesser
Opening reception: Saturday 1st July, 2017, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Bacterial and fungal parasitic and symbiotic behaviours are crucial for evolutionary novelty. The show, “Tired of Waiting” by Anna M. Szaflarski at Porcino, deals with the awkward position of waiting for evolutionary development through the occurrence of chance meetings and happy accidents between organisms.
Watch video here.
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David Horvitz
the light on water, a certain kind of overcast sky, a morning glory in the day’s beginning light, the distance
Opening reception Friday 28th April, 2017
The exhibition includes 40 new photo books by David Horvitz. Each book is comprised of 36 images that were printed from the artist’s digital photo archive. Once printed the original files were deleted. The photo books contain the selected and arranged photographs by Horvitz.
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Mira O’Brien
Glaspalast excerpt
Opening reception: Thursday 15th December, 2016
“Ohne einen Glaspalast” (Without a Glass Palace) is an architectural tableau… Instead of the famous gold-copper iridescent window panes, a dull grey-green plastic sheeting covers the frame… Shadow-like… visible through the translucent layers.
The mural, suspended from scaffolding… …hidden behind a giant mirror …the illusion of a continuous Schloss. …awaiting an uncertain fate. …the curious time-loop of the resurrection. And so some version of the trompe loei’l facade is currently being built.
“Ohne einen Glaspalast” continues… This tableau stands as a proposal for a future ruin…
The title, “Ohne einen Glaspalast”, is a fragment of a poem by Paul Scheerbart from his book “Glasarchitektur”.
“Glück ohne Glas, wie dumm ist das – Ohne einen Glaspalast ist das Leben eine Last –
Im Glashaus brennt es nimmermehr, man braucht da keine Feuerwehr –
Das Licht will durch das ganze All – und ist lebendig im Kristall”
– Paul Scheerbart, Glasarchitektur (1914)
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Michala Paludan
Ker ker ker
Secret opening reception: Friday 4th November, 2016
Public opening reception: Friday 25th November, 2016
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Jo-ey Tang
Like An Intruder, The Speaker Removes His Cap, Walking In The Air With His Hands To The Ground
Curated by Barbara Sirieix
Opening reception: Friday 16th September, 2016
David Horvitz was watching the Cosmos series by Carl Sagan at the time of the show at Porcino. With our time difference, I would often receive screenshots on my phone in the morning. They felt like coming out of a dream.
I’d been thinking a lot about synchronicity. If synchronicity can be maintained when a third body comes along or does it necessarily bring chaos.
For the sentence Like An Intruder, The Speaker Removes His Cap, Jo-ey added a third piece – part or piece, “teil oder stuck”, tuning a dissonant tempo. Like An Intruder, The Speaker Removes His Cap, Walking In the Air With His Hands To The Ground. It first strikes as a progression, but there is a recess at the starting point. The woman recalls another piece from another show, of voicemails read by Jo-ey. On repeat, she resurfaces with the sound of the streets. A mute whisper from the dead, in a city not anymore the same.
He brought along a piece of Japanese paper. A print of a drawing, scanned quickly when a dying moth landed on the flatbed scanner, where I found again the same tempo. The tune ended like Zhuangzi’s story as I received David’s text message: “Everything is stars.”
Barbara Sirieix
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Marley Freeman
Postcards for Porcino
Opening reception: 29th April, 2016
It has the appeal of a book minus
language and the
charm of a pre-verbal protege
with a taste for candy.
Deceptive as sugar.
The sweet disorder of strewn
garments given a body to wear,
a body give over to wear. CC
Each of these postcards is worth a thousand words. WT
My eyes can sit on it as opposed to drift across it. JR
Coordinates from beyond the inch; actual Physics at Play; some of the sweet spots from personal trips. MV
Nineteen Motto Books post-cards were sent from Long Island City, Queens NY on May 12th & 13th. I will be happy if thirteen of the nineteen arrive on time for the opening. These were originally made as works to raise money for a publication by American Books. Obviously for a myriad of reasons they never fulfilled their duty, and now are coming home to Berlin.
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Alvaro Urbano
Deep Down
Opening reception: 22nd November, 2015
Deep Down is a new installation featuringThe Ghost & The Host (2014), a video the artist made while in residency at the Villa Romana in Florence. The video is an archaeological dig into the residency’s century old past. Fragments of lost histories found discarded in the Villa’s garden by former residents have been unearthed. This residue of past inhabitants have become the setting that is inhabited by a cast of nocturnal creatures going about their day (their day being the night) – bugs, fishes, worms, lichens. A garden comes to life (a night garden). In night gardens fragrances become the light. Rocks glow from the moon glowing from the sun. Everything is indirect. Houses wake. Sculptures move like ghosts. Vision is uncertain. You don’t know if you have begun dreaming already. Presence is felt by absence. This new installation is made from materials found in parks around Berlin and leaves taken from the greenhouses in Berlin’s Botanischer Garten.
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Renata Kaminska
Hundert Millionen
Curated by Julia Wielgus
Opening reception: 11th January, 2015
Berlin-based Renata Kaminska examines the language used to describe art in today’s media. In her collages she uses cut up banknotes to cover art-works depicted in found newspaper photographs. With this gesture she points to the excitement of today’s press – a press that focuses on auction prices and exhibition attendance numbers, reducing art to a value system that is solely based on ratings and statistics.
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Daniel Santiago
an invisible portrait
Curated by Zanna Gilbert
Opening reception: 5th January, 2013
Zanna Gilbert writes:
A work of dubious provenance is exhibited at Porcino. The installation was recently mistakenly attributed to the artist Daniel Santiago. Born in 1939, Santiago’s output since the 1960s had until recently gone largely unnoticed, apart from his cult status in his hometown, Recife. There are various reasons for the omission of Santiago’s work from Brazilian art history. That he is from Recife, rather than Rio or São Paulo, plays one part. However, a whole generation of artists from the 1960s-1980s period, are only now being fully inscribed in the historical record, having suffered two decades of dictatorial rule in Brazil. Daniel’s own principles and idiosyncrasies compound these geographical and socio- historical effects: his lack of careerism; a consistently ephemeral production; and a generosity in authorship and sharing his ideas. In 2012, I curated, with Cristiana Tejo, a retrospective of Daniel Santiago’s work at the Museum of Modern Art in Recife. The instability and ephemerality of Santiago’s work, along with the artist’s humour, his often throw-away gestures and playfulness meant that works were re-made, re-performed, re-interpreted, and, in some cases, made for the first time. Lines between original and reconstruction were unclear.
It was out of this confluence of factors that a strange misunderstanding arose. Reading a Masters thesis on Daniel Santiago’s work a few weeks ago, I noticed that a humourous gesture made during the exhibition’s installation had been recorded as a one of Santiago’s works. On one of the installation days, Santiago had left his trademark Panama hat, sunglasses and walking stick behind while attending to some business inside the gallery. The supposed work was a hurriedly constructed portrait of the artist by a member of the exhibition team (ME). In the thesis, the work was attributed to Santiago, and visually compared to a painting by René Magritte. This work of dubious provenance is a fake, a phantom or an invention, a work created out of the spirit of Santiago’s work. But it is Santiago himself that makes this mistake possible, and then, the mistake is not really a mistake. The moment of reconstruction of an artist’s work also creates possibilities for galleries to present works of dubious provenance, and for the invention of history by academics.
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Susanne Bürner
Verstec
Opening reception: 19th March, 2013
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Ed Steck
I Am Down Here With the Boogens After All
Opening reception: 18th January, 2013
“I Am Down Here With the Boogens After All” – Ed Steck A self-portrait is a reflection. A self-portrait is a reflection: materials constructing images, sensations structuring architectural moments (definitive personal modulations), chronological impertinences, yourself creating your self, a frozen practice of an accumulative entirety until a singular point, the expression before the potential atmospheric capsizing. It is a resolution of the self-encapsulated within the frames of an image; it is how one is seen while seeing.
“I Am Down Here With the Boogens After All” is a day-book-like piece of self-portraiture that follows the perspective intake of an individual (a subject, a viewer) constantly absorbing material references. It is a moment of loss fixated on the repetitious revisiting of the mundane, the familiar, and sensational: misremembered memory to personal insertions into film, entering the fixed present to relive a cultivated past, and human grotesqueness to exaggerated special effects. A self-portrait is a manufacturing of a self-portrait.
Ed Steck is a writer from Southwestern Pennsylvania. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA. Publications include A Time Stream in Spaces: The Cultic Parody of Time-Induced Capital published by West as part of the Let Us Keep Our Own Noon group show, Field of Vision – a limited edition chapbook published by Reactor Press, Beach published as part of “Public Access” in collaboration with David Horvitz, Chinese Bondage in Peru in collaboration with Wintergarten LTD, and Mountain as part of “Archive for a Mountain” by Marc Handelman’s solo exhibition “Geological Sketches at Home and Abroad” at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. His work has appeared in the anthology Strange Attractors: Investigations In Non-Humanoid Extraterrestrial Sexualities published by Encyclopedia Destructica, Capricious Magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, LIT (forthcoming),1913: a journal of forms (forthcoming), in the publication for the 2012 Columbus Prize Exhibition at Kunsthalle Ravensburg on the work of painter Natalie Haeusler, and with a contribution in Omer Fast: 5,000 Feet Is Best published by The Power Plant and Sternberg Press. He is one third of American Books. He graduated from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.
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