Teaser
December 2009 - March 2010
Akira Ikeda Gallery, Berlin

Jan Bünnig‘s first gallery retrospective in his native Berlin, Teaser comprises works produced by the artist between 2006 and 2009. The title of the show alludes to a much larger body of work produced over this period, much of it being performative works shown in the public domain in group actions instigated by the artist himself. The titles of the works are purposely incidental and offer no easy path to the consumption of the ideas therein embodied. In order to understand the works, a sensory perception of forms - be they hard, soft, rough, smooth, broken, dented or polished - must be stimulated in order to gain a deeper sense of the order of the world in which these objects exist.

Upon first entry into the space, the viewer encounters Spent time with Olafur (2007), a sculpture consisting of a Siberian birch hat placed upon a simple steel geometric frame, the latter a product of Bünnig’s time spent working in the studio of Olafur Eliasson. The accompanying text reads “Wo ein Körper ist kann kein anderer sein”, an axiom of classical physics stating the impossibility for two bodies to exist at the same point in space simultaneously. It expounds on origination of mechanics that can’t fully be made clear. Bünnig describes this work as a reflection on the conflicts he faces as a young artist: the aesthetic moment as clouded in such Heisenbergian uncertainty.

Although this work visually stands apart from his others it nevertheless embodies some of the main themes implicit in Bünnig's art. The representation of an intentionally non-symbiotic relationship between nature and science belies an ongoing struggle to rectify matter - or nature - with its interpretation by scientific means. The concept of the body or a body is central to the understanding of this, the works Leg (2006) and Kuh Muschi (2007) emboyding this specific interest: the impact of one body in concert with another. The resultant object appears frozen, its impacted form a visible memory of the passed event. Typically these are not violent occurrences but more often serene collisions, such as a soft clay object falling on a concrete floor or in the case of Four Flames (2007), the crystalline emergence of four concrete pillars. A number of these pieces, by nature of their formation, contain voids within. These mysterious hollows are celebrated and displayed in a manner which gives sense of their form taking shape through the discourse of their physics which preternaturally dictates them: aesthetic by due natural order.

The theme of science versus nature is revisited in the work Untitled (2008) in which a root, found growing on the street and contorted between two cobble stones, is displayed as a diagram with directional arrows pointing to the forces which once impacted upon it. Upon this theme of neutered forces, the work Skipping Rope (2005), Bünnig presents a length of chain too short to be used for the titular game, the ends of which are cast into two resin handles in static repose. Like many of his works the scale is perplexing as is the use of a material usually cast to fulfill a specific function or rational application, challenging normative idea of what these, at times humorous objects, might actually represent.

The work Tiger Snake (2007) takes Bünnig's tropes with malleable materials in an alternate direction, in this case with the use of polyurethane foam, cast in the form of a dozen sausages. The visibility of the indentations made by the plastic sausage skins on the surface reveals another of Bünnig’s preoccupation, with mass produced inexpensive materials, many of which are commonly found in domestic environments. It is another duck-rabbit, or duck-rabbit sausage, proposition. The sausages are displayed on a thin white wrapping paper – a statement of packaging, subtly inferred, that this piece as the rest of the show itself, are matters fit for consumption.