With deposition, Manfred Pernice turns VIS into a space of potentiality. The exhibition constitutes a state of latency, making reference to sculpture’s coming-to-presence, the possible ways it can be “put into operation,” in the present and the future. In a kind of prologue, eight new “figures” are introduced. Fields on the ground mark out their spatial arrangement, creating a stage on which the “figures” cannot be recognized in their concrete form. Covered in sheets, they relate the possibility of their appearing at some other point in time. Each is assigned a field on the wall which indicates the scenic context of the action that has yet to take place. Pernice’s enactment allows a moment of tension to unfold, set off by playing with the preconditions of the constitution of meaning.
Manfred Pernice (born 1963, lives and works in Berlin) has recently had solo exhibitions at The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2017), the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, and Lulu, Mexico City (both in 2016). Among other exhibitions, his works have been shown at the Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, MUMOK – Museum of Modern Art Foundation Ludwig Vienna (both in 2018), KINDL – Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin, and the Fondazione Prada, Milan (both in 2016).
Kindly supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, and the Federal Chancellery of Austria.
