28 October, 2012, 4PM - Artist talk and workshop with Barbara Ryan

Part of the exhibition

Synaesthesia / I: The Orange Smell of November

Art Laboratory Berlin invites you to an artist talk and workshop with Barbara Ryan as part of the opening weekend of the first exhibition of the Synaesthesia series, The Orange Smell of November.

The artist Barbara Ryan’s perceptions of the world are underpinned by her polymodal synaesthesia which in turn forms the foundation of her artistic work. She experiences her synaesthesia »as something that is in her parallel conscious – as opposed to something that is in the subconscious – creating a duality of vision«. Her installation That can’t be September – it smells like the August of 1985! combines in a unique way the artist’s intimate personal interconnecting relationship between scent, colour, time and space, played out within the city of Berlin, where she lived in the 1990s.

The installation is a coded re-creation of her sense of space and time as imbued with colour and odour. Using text, photography and self-manufactured fragrances she re-maps the city according to the systematic guidelines of her own synaesthesia. The viewer is then invited to explore and decode the artist's unique phenomenological structures.
(More informaton on the exhibition)

Synaesthesia / I: The Orange Smell of November

Barbara Ryan
Annette Stahmer
 


Opening: 26 October, 2012, 8PM
Exhibition runs: 27 October – 16 December, 2012
Open: Fri-Sun, 2-6 PM and by appointment

As part of the new series Synaesthesia, Art Laboratory Berlin presents the first exhibition The Orange Smell of November with new works by Barbara Ryan and Annette Stahmer.
The term "synaesthesia", from the Greek "aisthesis" ("Sensation", "sensory impression") and "syn" ("together") meaning the experience of two or more sensory impressions at the same time, is both an artistic paradigm and neurological phenomena.

The artist Barbara Ryan’s perceptions of the world are underpinned by her polymodal synaesthesia which in turn forms the foundation of her artistic work. She experiences her synaesthesia »as something that is in her parallel conscious – as opposed to something that is in the subconscious, creating a duality of vision«. Her installation That can’t be September – it smells like the August of 1985! combines in a unique way the artist’s intimate personal relationship between scent, color, time and space, played out within the city of Berlin, where she lived in the 1990s.

The work of the Berlin typographer and artist Annette Stahmer revolves around language, the relationship between voice and writing, the act of writing, palimpsests and synaesthesia. The two videos in the exhibition - A ist blau and Synästhetische Bilder I - IV - show the artist's mother, a synaesthete who connects vowels with certain colours. The focus is on language that, following this internal logic, serves not only as a description of this phenomena, but becomes in itself material, assuming colour and consistency. Therefore it evokes within the listener poetic, almost surreal images.


With the generous support of:


Synaesthesia is supported in part by a generous gift from Michael Schröder.



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