PAULINE M'BAREK. Like but unlike. Winner ART'CONTEST 2012

25.04 > 26.05.2013

Free late evening opening: 25.04.2013 - 17:00 > 20:00

Winner of the 2012 ART’CONTEST, PAULINE M’BAREK presents polymorphic installations of drawings, videos, objects that question the place of art in light of artistic tradition. She explores the boundaries of the world of the museum and ways to overcome them. Discover the surprising, subtle and delicate work of this conceptual artist.

INTERVIEW

An ethnological museum is a place where a whole culture is represented and maintained through objects, often gathered during colonial periods in circumstances deemed rather questionable. These supposedly long dead objects are classified, identified and inventoried according to Western categories and invested with a new story. This then gives the ethnological object a somewhat theatrical quality, emphasizing the difference between the apparent rationality and objectivity of Western science and the supposed irrationality of other cultures with their animistic cosmology and fetishes.

Thus, a whole world is preserved under glass, distancing the visitor from being seduced by these strange objects. The glass acts as a barrier between visitor and object under the misleading pretext of scientific neutrality.

The installation explores the distinctions between knowledge and perception, examining the semantics of an inventory of exhibits displaying scientific practices.

Elements begin to emerge from their defining function, coming to life and creating double images. A showcase in trompe l'oeil (composed of shadow and light reflections) which unfolds itself  at a certain point of view; a video projection of a museum conservator’s tools (gloves, brushes, magnifying glass etc.) generating shadows of enchanted and strange objects; a rope designed to keep back visitors whips through space, frozen in an instantly delicate balance; a projection posing obsessive questions towards an unknown object.

A spatial path oscillating between attraction and distance, between fact and fetish, conservation and animation enabling ambivalent areas to become visible, emerging between subject and object. Similar but different, like but unlike.

Pauline M'Barek

Pauline M’Barek (born in Cologne in 1979) studied at the School of Fine Art in Hamburg, the Marseille School of Fine Art and the Academy of Media Art in Cologne. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions such as Factish to Cologne Art (2012 section New Position), and Trophy at the Sfeir-Semmler Gallery in 2011. She has participated in numerous international exhibitions such as Chkoun Ahna at the National Museum of Carthage in Tunisia (2012), The Memories Are Present at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (2012) and Weisser Schimmel in the Harald Falckenberg collection (2010).
Pauline M'Barek has received several grants and awards including the Prix Spiridon-Neven- DuMont (2010), a grant from the Kunststiftung NRW (2011), 2nd Prize Hector Förderpreis, Kunsthalle Mannheim (2012) and Prix Art'Contest 2012.