OPENING FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 / 6–9PM

In NO JOKE, Ballen and Carlsen composed photo-sculpted figures, swapped self-portraits, substituted and re-assigned body parts, oddly occupied architecture, cut and collaged hand-drawn masks and graffiti, as well as spiders, foxes, angels, demons and dolls—all from their individual image inventories—in an imaginary shared studio space, a dream- like set on which an illusive narrative unfolds.

Not unlike the Surrealist cadavre exquis, though more deliberate, this collaborative exchange nurtures and challenges both artists’ practice, creating fertile ground for the truly original to occur, something satisfyingly awkward and uneasy. As the artists expressed it in a recent interview with Office Magazine, “If you can define an idea with words then you can get rid of it. You can package it and put it in a supermarket. But if the art is indefinable it is more powerful in the subconscious, the subconscious can’t figure out what to do with it so it turns it over, turns it over, turns it over, trying to come up with some relationship to it ... So the work should have that aspect of not being easily placed. If it’s too easily placed, it has no impact.”

The gallery will publish a complete catalog on the occasion of the exhibition.

SEPTEMBER 16–OCTOBER 22, 2016 / TUE–SAT 11–6PM

DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM Tucholskystraße 38