Friday 08.26.16 7pm
Meliksetian | Briggs
West Hollywood

Meliksetian | Briggs is presenting Tim Berresheim’s first solo exhibition in the United States since 2010, when his “Phoenix - The Guilty Pleasure” series was shown in Los Angeles (Patrick Painter Inc) and his programmatic “Future Gipsy Antifolklore (What?!)” exhibition in New York (Marc Jancou). In keeping with the New York presentation, the title of the current exhibition “Aus alter Wurzel neue Kraft” [New Strength from an Old Root] can be read as a further programmatic affirmation of the present for Berresheim’s entire oeuvre – or more precisely of the transformation of traditional pictorial and representational concepts by means of the technical media-oriented possibilities of a present that is largely determined by the ongoing process of digitalization. 

The “old root” referenced by the works is not only the panel picture that is still the most prominent presentational format in the field of fine arts but also the computer, which for the past fifty years has been available as a tool to generate images. But according to Berresheim it is still primarily being used in the sense of a “doubling of the world” as standardized by one-point perspective and thus not to the full extent of its potentials. The cited root is symbolized by a lemon with male attributes – still fragrant but, as can be seen on the exhibition poster, simultaneously dependent on a walking aid and notepad. Like the figure of the wanderer that appeared as the symbol of the aforementioned current transit phase in the 2014 solo exhibition “Auge und Welt” at the Düsseldorf Kunstverein, it was also prepared by the illustrator Andi Thissen. In conjunction with “Aus alter Wurzel neue Kraft,” the figures conceived by Thissen typifying central aspects of Berresheim’s aesthetic concept (such as ambiguity, coherence or additive knowledge) will be presented for the first time in the form of a separate group of prints.
 

Meliksetian | Briggs

313 N Fairfax Avenue

West Hollywood, CA 90036