Noisy Ghost
Noisy Ghost
Ben Murray & Jeremy Bolen
opening reception: 6 September 2019, 7 pm – 10 pm
Exgirlfriend Gallery Lankwitzer Str. 14, 12107 Berlin
7 - 27 September 2019 by appointment
Berlin Art Week opening hours:
Friday, 13th – 13.00 - 17.00
Saturday, 14th – 13.00 - 17.00
Sunday, 15th – 17.00 - 19.00: Exhibition tour and cocktail hour led by gallery director Elena Feijoo
Noisy Ghost is an exhibition focusing on exposing invisible forces created by the human condition. Through unconventional modes, both artists translate observations of the unknowable through the use of site as an apparatus or the performance of depiction.
Bolen's recent work focuses on our ability to observe radioactivity through site specific, experimental modes of photography and scientific investigation. Hovering between empirical recording and scientific measurement Bolen investigates The Morris Operation ––the only high level radioactive waste storage facility in the United States––holding 772 tons of spent nuclear fuel and sitting just 60 miles from the city of Chicago. To record the evolving, invisible energy surrounding the site Bolen employs buried film, asphalt, and the Advanced Photon Source Beam at Argonne National Laboratory (where Bolen became a "User" in 2014) to help extend our sensory capabilities and perceive the unseen.
Murray’s most recent paintings expand on the notion of recording memory by using historical conventions painting while looking to moving images as the subject. These homages to the works of experimental film icons such as Carolee Schneeman, Stan Brakhage and Hollis Frampton present complex atmospheric forms created from the films durational compositions. While they appear reminiscent of early American Abstract Expressionism, these paintings are in fact deceptively observational attempts to depict the films duration while they are being played in real time. Eventually, the linear narratives dissolve into a multi-layered surface of paint that confuses beginning and end. The result is an artifact of a performance that attempts to repeatedly capture the rapidly disappearing.
The intersections of these works diverge into other ghosts and ghost stories that the artists evoke through modes of painting, photography, sculpture and installation resulting in a nebulous experience where the viewer is engulfed in presences beyond normal sensory capabilities.
“Noisy Ghost” will be presented in the main gallery space alongside the exhibition “Die Versteinerten,” by Aaike Stuart and Esteban Rivera.
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