Backrooms is a programme of events, readings, performances, screenings, concerts and other artistic formats in the Löwenbräu building in Zürich, Switzerland, organized by Otto Bonnen. The Löwenbräukunst offers various architectural and social spaces that Backrooms engages with. The current exhibition in the basement of Kunsthalle Zürich is titled ‘Files’ and features ring binders by the artists Daniel Dawson, Stefano Faoro, Gritli Faulhaber, Peter Fend, Ada Friedman, Dani Leder, Maggie Lee, Megan Plunkett, Kate Sansom, Jen Shear, Richard Sides, Lise Soskolne, and Adelhyd van Bender. In this video, Otto Bonnen talks about the concept of the 'Backrooms' project and the current exhibition, and shows as an example the ring binder of the artist Maggie Lee, who had a solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Zürich this spring. After the opening, the space will be open by appointment only.
Backrooms: Files / Kunsthalle Zürich. Vernissage, September 27, 2024.
Backrooms: Files / Kunsthalle Zürich. Vernissage, September 27, 2024.
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CreativityTranscript
01:00So, as you can see, this exhibition is a format exhibition.
01:06All the presented works are ring binders made by artists.
01:11It's very abstract, the idea of how an artist works, and the ring binder usually stands
01:18for office work, so it's like the image for what people think of what work looks like,
01:24and I really like that a lot of artists, or a few artists, use the ring binder also as
01:30like some artistic medium.
01:32And you see in this show that they use it very differently, as some kind of playful
01:38field where you can rearrange stuff easily, maybe you collect your material for collages
01:45or as reference for paintings, or as a preparation for an exhibition, or for a very personal
01:52system and logic.
01:53So this is an example for a binder that is completely a preparation for one project.
02:00That was a project that she did with this shopping house called Nordstrom in New York,
02:05and here it's titled Bling Installation, it's also one of the few binders that has a cover.
02:11And in here you see all the material she collected in the preparation of the show, so sometimes
02:18it's reminders for herself, it's notes.
02:21Here's even some stickers that are left over to repair the pages, this one fell off here.
02:28And it starts with the entrance to the shopping house, and as you can see it also has some
02:38categories here.
02:40I really like this moment, bling blings, that's a part of the show where she produced big
02:46ornaments for the wall, like huge big ornaments, and here you can see how she came to find
02:53these ornaments.
02:54So this is a screenshot that she took of another video, and she circled this ornament that
03:00she liked of a wallpaper on the wall, or what I really like is a printout of a gift, some
03:10kind of like a flipbook.
03:12So this gift starts with one pixel, and then later becomes these sparkles, and then on
03:20other pages you see she circles the moments that she likes, and then later reproduces
03:26as big decorative ornaments, like here, pixelation.
03:35But also material studies, like this one, or on a later page you even see some textile samples.
03:55So this is some cutouts, some stencils, some already printout forms and shapes, and if
04:02you see the whole show then it of course makes sense, so there's furniture, there's
04:05big printouts, there's ornaments, there's a video, or a note to herself that she had
04:15during the preparation of the show, posted to her door, think poppy pop.
04:22This was a long research of trying to figure out who's working with Binders, Maggie I knew
04:27because we did the show at Kunsthalle this year together, and I knew she was working
04:32with Binders in preparation.
04:34Some of them I knew from studio visits, some of them were my friends, but then also some
04:39were pointed out for me, and then at some point it becomes selective perception, so
04:47all of a sudden you see Binders everywhere, not everywhere, but yeah.
04:54But it is a very intimate format to most of the people because it's not a resolved
05:02artwork, and that's why also some people disagreed or didn't want to be shown in the show.
05:11So my program is called Backrooms, because first I had another space, and this building
05:16has a lot of side spaces, you know there's a lot of institutions and galleries and other
05:20art spaces, but also spaces like this that no one knows about, and it's this huge building
05:25with a lot of separés and backrooms, and I first, Daniel asked me to work for him as
05:33a curator to do a side program for Kunsthalle, with events and little other hybrid formats
05:38that could show maybe more concentrated, smaller shows that we can't do in the big floors.
05:46Because this space kind of grew over the years as some kind of, yeah, like for everything,
05:53so it originally was a storage space, and then it became a party location for the after-parties
06:02of the openings, and then also some artists did screenings in here of movies, because
06:06it's nice, it's dark, you don't have to enclose a whole room to make it dark.
06:12And then other curators, Katrin Bentele, who's now at Kunstverein Düsseldorf, and
06:17Matthew Hansen did a really good talk program show down here, and then when I started it
06:23was kind of clear that we would do a lot of the programming in that space.
06:27So it's very good for screenings, but also talks, concerts, performances, yeah.
06:33And I like to do these kind of projects that are about this kind of besides the art, so
06:41what's happening on the way to an artwork that is most of the time not shown or present.
06:48So the first program that I did was poetry of artists who usually work in a different
06:55kind of field, and most of them have never read it to an audience, so they read their
06:59poetry to an audience and with an audience, and also all brought on artwork.
07:05So that's how it started, and this is where we are now, so this is also part of what is
07:09happening on the side to the artworks, and most of us just see the finished paintings
07:15or videos or performances in the art spaces, but most of the time the artist is with themselves.
07:23And this is what I like about it, it's because it materializes as some kind of form that
07:29we can exhibit, and it gives us an idea of how artists work.
07:40Okay.
07:59Like to like what changed her work, that was cool, doesn't mean nothing.
08:10No last note to change the, did I say the word?
08:15That's what you said.
08:17I meant the sex.
08:19But you said work.