JULIAN-JAKOB KNEER
wicked games
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OPENING
SATURDAY 21 APRIL 7-10PM ROOM E–10 27 @ CENTER KURFÜRTSTENSTRASSE 174, 10785 BERLIN
OPENING HOURS
APRIL 26th-29th 11am–6pm
AND BY APPOINTMENT
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Room E-10 27 @ Center is pleased to present wicked games, a solo exhibition by Julian-Jakob Kneer. Kneer is primarily a sculptor and installation artist. He questions social mores with art that skirts the line between abjection and attraction. His investigations of subcultural semiotics and obscure bodily fetishes are underlined by a particular interest in (traditional) craft and the juxtaposition of opposing aesthetics.
For his presentation at Center, the artist focuses his attention on the carnival and its potential to parody and produce grotesque identity configurations. The carnival sets the stage for a world of extremes where laughter subverts authority. His engagement with this theme raises questions about our conception of high and low culture, where the centrality of archetypes continues to exert a powerful influence on the collective imagination. Loners, Emos (emotional hardcore rockers), and cultural misfits are exemplified by the figure of the Waggis, a character that figures in the yearly Carnival of Basel. In this carnival, the Waggis is excluded from the community and this is played out as a parody of social relations and groupthink. The Waggis occupies the paradoxical position of being a misfit within a group of outsiders. The subjective identity produced by the group and those excluded from the group throws up questions related to libidinal investment, the taboos on which power relations are constructed and the violence that is exacted on, and by, those outside of the norm.
Julian-Jakob Kneer (*1992 in Basel, CH) lives and works in Berlin. Recent projects include sub rosa appendix (a publication for Paris Ass Book Fair at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2018); Jugend ist Trunkenheit ohne Wein at BIKINI in Basel (group show curated, with interventions, by Kneer, 2018); CRIB II at Galerie95 in Biel (group show, in collab. w/ Yves Scherer, 2017); sub rosa at 1.1 in Basel (solo show, 2017); Ushirode at Geddert Hronjec Collection in Berlin (solo performance, 2017); GTdaHÖ at Ambassador** in Vienna (group show, curated by Kneer, 2017); Webresidency 5: rule#34 @ www.oslo10.ch/rule-34 (solo in collab. w/ Blue Stork, 2017); International blood drinker at Gärtnergasse in Vienna (duo show with Clémence de La Tour du Pin, 2016). Upcoming projects include wicked games at ROOM E-10 27 @ Center in Berlin (solo); A night in Alexander (browser-based group show curated by Gregory Blunt).