Isabel Lewis feat. Dirk Bell
Gazebo SoS 2020
Open Space
Viewings of the drawing
Courtesy the artists
Daily 11 am, 2 pm, 6pm
Tu + We at 8pm
Isabel Lewis *1981 in Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic lives in Berlin
Dirk Bell *1969 in Munich, Germany
lives in Berlin
Presented with the support of Callie’s, Berlin
Gazebo SoS 2020 invites you to entrust yourself to the architecture, to get involved, but above all to experience the space intuitively. Isabel Lewis wants to seduce her audience even when she is not there. She is a master at sharpening and refining sensory perception, transferring the visual experience in art to all the senses. She sees herself in the role of the host, who conveys relaxation and well-being through the spaces she creates and opens up new perspectives. Multimedia technologies are an integral part of her performative way of working as well as maintaining long-standing collaborations with Norwegian smell researcher Sissel Tolaas, Berlin-based musical entity LABOUR, and American classicist Brooke Holmes for example.
On this occasion Lewis collaborates with visual artist Dirk Bell in transforming the exhibition space into a “gazebo” or viewing pavilion. By cutting open the walls of the octagonal space the work offers views onto the surrounding exhibition as well as seating surfaces that invite visitors to rest, sense their bodies, and reflect. Bell’s work often delivers cultural critique in the form of poetic visual language. This approach meets Lewis’s interest in responding to and being in conversation with the site. Bell both continues the architectural language of Gustav Peichl while casting doubt on the building’s effort to “reflect the democracy at the heart of Europe” * by creating the octagonal sinking platform. A free-standing drawing, a kind of spectre, created by Bell as part of their ongoing artistic conversation appears in the space as a performance periodically.
Isabel Lewis as well offers her space for a programme of engagement with artists with whom she shares an interest in embodied forms of knowledge: Lou Drago who will offer sonic meditations for accessing alternate space/time called Suspending Time with a soundscape comprised of minimal and drone music and Dmitry Paranyushkin who will propose 8OS, a bodily awareness and consciousness-raising practice he created that begins with an introduction of theoretical principles that are then put into physical action in the form of a workshop. Lewis advocates for the rehabilitation of the entire human sensorium as a way to put into check what she criticizes as the visual dominance of contemporary culture.
Other formats that form the educational programme of the exhibition such as Meet & Speak in which refugees, migrants and adults raised in Germany discover the exhibition together, as well as Hybrid identities, Hybrid artworks, an inclusive dance workshop are invited by the artist to take place in Gazebo SoS 2020.
Miriam Barhoum
The artist studied literature, dance and philosophy. She works far beyond the borders of contemporary dance and develops her work in a variety of different formats, including lecture performances, workshops, music sessions, parties and so-called “hosted occasions”.
Isabel Lewis wants to seduce her audience even when she is not there.
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* The striking building on the erstwhile ‘diplomatic racetrack’ was designed by the Viennese architect Gustav Peichl. It was the serene poetic character of his design that tipped the scales in his favour and singled it out among the thirty-five entries submitted to the jury of the initial ideas competition. The jury protocol of October 1986 states: “Both in terms of function and design, the revised concept seeks to reflect the democracy at the heart of Europe in the new building of the Federal Kunsthalle”.