April 2nd - May 28th, 2016

Doppelgänger

Opening Reception
Saturday, April 2, 2016 6-9pm

Artist and Curator Discussion Saturday, April 2, 2016 4pm
 

curated by dr Julia-Constance DIssel, Ichiro Irie, Sandra Mann and Max Presneill

German and US artists are paired to continue our series of exhibitions exploring the links between SoCal art and other centers of artistic production

Featuring: Shiva Aliabadi, Kelly Barrie, Eric Decastro, Rainer Dissel, Martin Durazo, Christiane Feser, Christine de la Garenne, Kio Griffith, Florian Heinke, Steve Hough, Ichiro Irie, Franziska Kneidl, John Knuth , Sandra Kranich, Fabiola Menchelli, Sandra Mann, Anny & Sibel Öztürk , Manfred Peckl, Ave Pildas, Stehn Raupach, Tobias Rehberger, Roland Reiss, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Marcus Sendlinger, Britton Tolliver, Lena Wolek, Augusta Wood, Eric Yahnker, Ekrem Yalçindağ

Coordinated as a collaboration between German curators Dr. Julia-Constance Dissel and Sandra Mann, Los Angeles-based curator Ichiro Irie and Max Presneill, this exhibition explores similarities of practices that occur within globally expansive yet hyper-connected art production. Taking as its starting point similar thematics and/or formal artistic investigations (technique, material, methodologies, etc.) Doppelgänger reflects on similarity as a tool to investigate both the hyper-connectivity that exchanges issues, trends and impulses on global scale as well as the simultaneity of expression that it engenders. In this way, the curators engage the capacity of art's function as a seismograph for sociological development.

The concept of the “Doppelgänger” emerges from German romantic literature at the end of the eighteenth century and refers to an entity that possesses the likeness of another—a perfect look-alike. Like Robert Louis Stevenson's Doctor Hyde, the Doppelgänger is a superficial similarity that, while looking and/or sounding similar, is possessed of a different spirit and engagement. The curators have collected together 30 artists from Germany and North America whose juxtaposition in Doppelgänger aesthetically or thematically explores the increased growth of simultaneity in the arts as well as raising issues concerning the meaning of originality and authenticity in the arts.