For the second Berlin-Paris exchange, organized by the Bureau des Arts Plastiques and the French Embassy in Berlin, Esther Schipper presents Matti Braun, Nathan Carter and Gabriel Kuri. This group exhibition offers each artist a space and allows for the first time in France a more complete overview of their work. Three different positions, but whose concerns are not so divergent. Matti Braun is interested in cultures, their migrations and transfers, Nathan Carter unveils the networks and mutations of the world and Gabriel Kuri unveils the objects of everyday life.
The works of Matti Braun (*1968) are invitations to travel. Their creative processes are based on research and knowledge of the interplay of different cultures: historical and geographical facts, observations, memories, images and forms become the narrative framework of her precise and minimalist works. Thus India and Indonesia and their relationship to the West inspired Matti Braun to create two sets of works: LOTA in 2006 and ATOL in 2008. Among other things, the large cotton wall hanging with its geometric patterns, conceived for the space of the Galerie Nathalie Obadia, refers to the various relationships and exchanges - such as the revival of Western serial compositions in India and Indonesia. The simple pattern also recalls those developed by the National Institute of Design, the school of Design, created in 1961 in Ahmedabad, on the model of the Bauhaus. Similarly, the batiks, traditional techniques of Indonesia, which the artist has appropriated, become for him a source of inspiration and a model, a new reference of history.
Nathan Carter (*1970) brings a reflection and an approach on our codified network system, borrowed from the influx of information. He recreates, through simple and colorful elements, a set of works that by their playfulness and lightness invite us to reflect on a complex world. His recent works are presented as small antennas or parabolas, promising a new perception of the messages to be sent or received. The eye searches and follows the lines he creates, and escapes. Through his sculptures and collages he succeeds in losing us in our maze of communication and thoughts.
This abundance of information is expressed in Nathan Carter's simplified formal language where the influence of the American avant-garde can be felt.
Gabriel Kuri (*1970) uses everyday artifacts in his sculptures and installations; the de-hierarchization of materials and the insertion of collected and used objects such as soaps, cash register or parking tickets, tickets, cans or cigarette butts like those placed with great precision between the marble plates of the pieces presented here, allow a recontextualization of the products of our consumer society. In the same way and as the title Self portrait as a contention and flow chart suggests, the work is a self-portrait, but in Kuri's case it becomes a simple piece of insulating canvas flanked by a bottle and a plastic bag filled with alcohol, thus giving a new poetry to everyday objects. Through the exploration of themes such as economic structures and cultural specificities, he develops a work of assembly where concept, reality and experience enter into dialogue.