EVA & ADELE are a couple of German  artists who live and create ABOVE GENDER BOUNDARIES . Their guiding principle is: WHEREVER WE ARE IS MUSEUM! They want to impose on the world their vision of FUTURING.
EVA & ADELE function in public space as an art work. The artists treat their own bodies as living sculpture, streets – as galleries and grand artistic events as a museum. Their careful and elaborate make-up and costumes conceal a small woman and a large man, whose spiritual femininity has conquered his masculinity.  The artistic activities of the pair are documented and commented on by the audience and by casual passersby. The pair collects the photographs and films produced by the public.
 
At the MOCAK exhibition, we shall be presenting photographic documentation, costumes and video.

Role Models - Role Playing

Roles, actors, stages, scripts ... a glance at the imagery of these terms reveals society as a theatre. We are all actors playing different cultural, social and biological roles. According to Erving Goffman (“The Presentation of Self in Everday Life“), life is a theatre in which we all perform different roles in order to fulfil social norms and expectations and present our own “self”. While society depends on a smooth coordination of actors and roles and “spoilsports”are marginalized, subjected to therapy, locked up or locked out, art deals with problematic areas of friction and breaking points between roles and actors. It reflects our desire to look behind the mask, where we seem to expect “authentic”persons. This is the first exhibition –featuring photographs, graphics, videos and installations - that gives acomprehensive survey of the phenomenon of role playing as a theme of art, from paraphrased Tableaux vivants of the 19th century to role-playing games in internetbased social networks. In order to do justice to the historicity and heterogeneity of role-playing, the exhibition subdivides this phenomenon into thematic fields.

Problems and concepts of identity were central themes of contemporary art of the 1990s and were addressed in various exhibitions, which frequently focused on concepts of female identity. What has happened since the  debate of the 1990s? In which way has our role understanding been influenced by the media? In the 1998 movie The Truman Show the protagonist is completely unaware that he is monitored by 5,000 cameras 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while “everyday life” is simulated with gigantic effort. At that time filmmakers were still able to present this as a dark vision of the future. The reality show Big Brother, which was first broadcast in 2000, has radically changed the distinction between private and public role.

Since the 1968 generation’s demand for spontaneity and authenticity has been unmasked as paradox, we can find a playful approach to roles and an
effortless switching between them today. People assume virtual identities in their “Second Life” and in internet forums.

Repetitions and duplication are of central importance for role-playing. In the field of art this results in a special punchline, as the role is emphasized by the repetition of an iconographic model or a specific work of art and self-presentation is unmasked as re-enactment. The exhibition presents a survey on the subject of role models and role-playing, according to specific thematic guidelines:

19th century role-playing, religious role-playing (Passion of Christ, the Last Supper, other biblical scenes), paraphrases of works of art, concepts ofidentity (reflections on the role of artists, artists as works of art, gender roles and stereotypes, travesty, multiplication and repetition, ethnic identity, I is another) Theatricality, Fiction and Fantasy, private and public roles (socialisation, social class and profession), serious games (re-enactment, role-playing as therapy and political instrument)

The exhibition will be on display at the MdM MÖNCHSBERG from 23 July until 30 October 2011 and features works dealing with various aspects of
role-playing by the following artists:

Marina Abramovic, Irene Andessner, Eleanor Antin, Hippolyte Bayard, Tina Barney, Christa Biedermann, Christian Boltanski, Candice Breitz, Claude Cahun, Julia Margaret Cameron, Robbie Cooper, Martin Dammann, Christoph Draeger, Marcel Duchamp, Yan Duyvendak, Sławomir Elsner, Eva & Adele, Harun Farocki, Cao Fei, Gilbert & George, Niklas Goldbach, Douglas Gordon, Francisco de Goya, Rodney Graham, G.R.A.M., Aneta Grzeszykowska, Fred Holland Day, Christian Jankowski, Glenn Kaino, Martin Kippenberger, Jürgen Klauke, David LaChapelle, An-My Lê, Ulrike Lienbacher, Urs Luthi, Christopher Makos, Madame Yevonde, Man Ray, Anja Manfredi, Manon, Dieter Meier, Yasumasa Morimura, Adi Nes, Suzanne Opton, Ferhat Özgür, Jack Pierson, Sascha Pohle, Benjamin Rinner, Dirk Rose, Ugo Rondinone, Julika Rudelius, August Sander, Erik Schmidt, Elfie Semotan, Cindy Sherman, Taryn Simon, Elaine Sturtevant, Timm Ulrichs, Andy Warhol, Gillian Wearing, William Wegman, Hannah Wilke, Ming Wong, David Wojnarowicz and many others.

A comprehensive, richly illustrated catalogue with texts by Mark Butler, Susanne Holschbach, Birgit Jooss, Sabine Kampmann, Thomas Meinecke, Vanessa Joan Müller, Esther Ruelfs, Toni Stooss and Veit Ziegelmaier has been published by Hirmer Verlag in conjunction with the exhibition.
 Edited by Toni Stooss, Esther Ruelfs, Hirmer Verlag, München, 2011
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Chambres d’artistes 
au château du Pé

Bevis Martin et Charlie Youle / EVA & ADELE / 
frédéric dumond et Emmanuel Adely / 
John Giorno et Ugo Rondinone / Mrzyk et Moriceau / 
Sarah Fauguet et David Cousinard

En 1992, Saint-Jean-de-Boiseau a acquis ce château du XVIIIe siècle et son parc boisé de 7 hectares. Ayant pour souhait d’en faire un lieu culturel et un gîte d’étape, la commune a fait appel à Estuaire pour l’aménagement de six chambres.
Un château en tuffeau, posé sur une butte, domine d’un côté une pièce d’eau dans laquelle deux cygnes s’ébrouent et de l’autre les vastes marais de Loire : le cadre évoque d’emblée l’univers des contes de fées. À l’intérieur, un bestiaire fantastique, des meubles cachés dans les cloisons, une fenêtre qui parle, des formes sortant des murs : c’est aussi à la manière du conte qu’on peut aborder les chambres imaginées par les artistes.
Les contes sont l’une des plus vieilles formes d’expression de l’histoire de l’humanité, voyageant à travers les siècles et de bouche à oreille sur toute la surface du globe, s’adaptant aux mœurs et coutumes des sociétés traversées. De ces épopées merveilleuses se dégage une vision renouvelée de la communauté humaine et de l’individu propre. À l’instar des contes, les six portes des chambres ouvrent sur six univers qui sont autant de lectures du monde que de miroirs sur notre être profond.
Comme une invitation à aborder la “chambre” comme lieu de l’intimité, ce sont six couples d’artistes qui ont été conviés. Certains sont perçus dans le monde artistique comme des entités indissociables, les autres sont des couples dans la vie mais n’avaient encore jamais développé un projet commun.

EVA & ADÈLE
NEBELGLANZ

C’est toute de rouge que la chambre d’EVA & ADELE est habillée. Outre le rose, cette couleur joue un rôle très important dans l’œuvre protéiforme de ce couple d’artistes. Elles voient le château comme une référence aux mythes et contes de fées dans lesquels sa présence est permanente. Symbolisant aussi bien le danger que les désirs, le pouvoir sexuel, les interdits, l’œuvre fait référence à l’amour, à la sexualité, aux rêves, au caractère éphémère de la vie. La peinture murale d’EVA & ADELE dépasse la contradiction qui existe entre force de l’expression plastique et œuvre purement conceptuelle : c’est une invention faite avec l’espace, une construction nouvelle. Leur logo répété systématiquement dans les entrelacs de la peinture fait référence à l’œuvre d’art vivante qu’est la performance EVA & ADELE, élargissant de fait le domaine de la peinture à l’espace public et posant ainsi des problématiques qui se situent en dehors de la peinture et qui pourtant émanent d’elle. Tiré du poème de Goethe “À la lune”, on pourrait traduire le mot “Nebelglanz“ par “brouillard de clarté”. C’est un des mots allemands préférés de Jorge Luis Borges, le grand poète argentin dont EVA & ADELE vénèrent l’œuvre. Ce néologisme porte en lui une contradiction de sens ainsi qu’une proximité avec le monde de l’imaginaire, du fantastique. “Nebelglanz” ternit et illumine à la fois, il cache et révèle, il inquiète et fascine.

How individual are our perceptions of ourselves and our own bodies? Our appearance is influenced by social norms, shaped into certain poses, labelled by fashion brands, controlled and determined by our everyday environment. The works on display in this exhibition do not depict the body as an expression of authentic individuality, but as a plane for the projection of social inscriptions.
 The exhibition presents about 45 contemporary works from the museum‘s own collection, which deal with the construction of personality depending on the body as means of expression. This has nothing to do with an emphatic notion of individuality in the sense of a self-determined awareness of one‘s own body. The works selected focus on the way in which the body is formed by exterior influences. Youth cultures define themselves through certain looks and poses, which they express with their bodies. Youths and their typical attitudes as representatives of pop culture are the motif of Nicole Schatt’s drawings and the large-format paintings created by the artist duo Muntean/Rosenblum. Ulrike Lienbacher explores gender-typical poses in her photographs. The artist plays with the recognition of a specific pose and investigates what makes a certain pose female or male. Anja Ronacher uses the body as material and freezes body postures during movements.
In this way the body is turned into a sculpture. In her series “Körperkonfigurationen” (”Body Configurations”), VALIE EXPORT describes the principles of the body’s adjustment to ist environment as “adaption“, “insertion“ and “addition”. She uses her body to form architectural settings of urban spaces and presents her body as manipulable material. Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch also explore the relationship between body and space. In their film stills they show the time flow of an action, at the end of which the actor‘s body reaches the adjacent room through an opening in the wall that is created during the performance. Christoph Rütiman’s video work turns the spectators’ attention to the relationship between the perception of the beholder and the apparatus of the camera. In his video we can watch the track of a camera mounted to a rail system and learn how the bodily process of seeing is regulated by technology.

The exhibition also shows works by Stephan Balkenhol, Manfred Erjautz, G.R.A.M.,  Manfred Grübl, Maria Hahnenkamp, Caroline Heider, Birgit Jürgenssen, Werner Reiterer, Markus Schinwald, Borjana Ventzislavova, Heimo Zobernig and others.

A l´occasion du Festival inSPIRACJE city dans la ville de Szczecin en Pologne, les artistes exposeront 99 oeuvres de leur série Médiaplastic.