Artist Georges Adéagbo’s New Exhibition in Berlin Juxtaposes Cultural Artifacts From Around the World to Spark New Ways of Seeing—See It Here

As galleries around the world begin to slowly reopen, we are
focusing on exhibitions at spaces that are now receiving
public visitors. Check out this show at a newly reopened gallery
below.

“The ABC’s
of Georges Adéagbo: Speaking Civilization and Showing
Culture”
Through August 1 at Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin

What the gallery
says: “In this project, comprised of several
assemblages and installations, Adéagbo develops a personal
encyclopedia of things and impressions he has collected throughout
his research in Berlin and Benin, and sets them center stage with
his written comments.

Adéagbo’s installations are both a cross-section of our time,
with its diverging geopolitical interests, and evidence of the
mediating function of cultures, which Adéagbo makes visible through
his cultural transfer. In Benin, he has translated what he found in
Berlin into images and reliefs; from there, he brings sculptures
and masks that enter into conversation with Western artifacts. At
the same time, as the title suggests, the new assemblage is a
reflection on the artist’s own practice of collecting and
questioning.

Adéagbo often compares his installations to a courtroom, in
which many witnesses testify to the facts of a case, and the
observers ultimately makes their own judgements or simply leave
what at first seem to be contradictory ones standing. Above all,
Adéagbo sees writing systems as building blocks of cultures, almost
as a kind of DNA, whose modification can have fatal
consequences.”

Why it’s worth a look: The Benin-born,
Berlin-based artist Georges Adéagbo has spent the extent of
his (non-traditional) art career collecting ephemera from
everywhere and anywhere he can find it. In what amounts to a visual
diary, the artist’s texts, record jackets, paintings, photographs,
books, and other objects tell the story of individual thinkers and
artists, and speak to broader ideas that emerge from societies
around the world.

By juxtaposing his own personal encounters and understandings
with objects, the artist welcomes viewers to draw associations and
conclusions with the addition of their own perspectives. The
resulting “archaeology of knowledge” is a compendium of
perspectives.

What it looks like:

The post Artist Georges Adéagbo’s New Exhibition in Berlin
Juxtaposes Cultural Artifacts From Around the World to Spark New
Ways of Seeing—See It Here appeared first on artnet
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