The exhibition “Ultrasocial Pop” by Filip Markiewicz at the Haus am Lützowplatz (HaL) is part of a larger, widely ramified project of the same name that is being realised in different places and at different times. The poetological centre of the project is the album “Ultrasocial Pop” by Raftside, the musical identity of Filip Markiewicz, which was released in September 2021 on the Berlin label “Grzegorzki Records”.
Image above: Filip Markiewicz, Ultrasocial Pop, Cover
Filip Markiewicz lived in Berlin from 2009 to 2012. The exhibition at the Haus am Lützopwlatz (HaL) is the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in Berlin and results from a cooperation with MUDAM in Luxembourg. Some of the works now on show in Berlin were produced and presented there in connection with the group exhibition “Freigeister” (November 11th, 2021 – February 27th, 2022). In addition to several newly produced wall works and animated films, the Berlin exhibition is complemented by a series of drawings that take up the motifs of the musical piece “Pictures at an Exhibition” (1874) composed by Modest Mussorgsky. These sheets are related to the performance of this composition by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra on April 24th 2022, for which Filip Markiewicz has designed the set design. In addition, the film “Euro Hamlet”, which was shot in 2021 as part of the play “Euro Hamlet”, will be shown for the first time in Germany. The film is an experimental version of the theatre performance produced for the Lausitz Festival, which Filip Markiewicz directed and for which he designed the set.
Finally, the exhibition is in direct dialogue with the artist’s solo exhibition “Instant Comedy”, which opened at the Konschthal Esch at the end of February 2022 as part of Esch-sur-Alzett’s celebrations as European Capital of Culture. “Instant Comedy” is the title of a track on the album “Ultrasocial Pop”. The Berlin exhibition and the exhibition in the Konschthal Esch will be combined in November 2022 – also under the title “Ultrasocial Pop” – at the Meno Parkas Gallery in Kaunas (Lithuania). Kaunas, like Esch-sur-Alzett, is the European Capital of Culture in 2022.
Filip Markiewicz was born in Luxembourg in 1980 as the son of Polish emigrants and studied art in Strasbourg until 2006. Markiewicz understands the aesthetic fusion of high and pop culture in different media as a coherent response to the complexity and contradictoriness of our hyper-medialised world today, in which facts and fictions are in a permanent process of transformation. In Markiewicz’s work, however, it is also always a matter of dealing with political, social and economic discourses, not least by reflecting on the form of presentation of art. The exhibition “Ultrasocial Pop” is a hybrid that oscillates between an exhibition stand, a stage and fragments of the entertainment industry and is difficult to classify.
WHEN?
Opening: Thursday, April 7th 2022, 7 pm
The artist will be present. The event will also be streamed online via Instagram Live.
Exhibition dates: Friday, April 8th – Sunday, June 12th 2022
Events in relation to the exhibition:
Artist talk: Sunday, April 24th, 2022, 3 pm
Performance by Filip Markiewicz/Raftside: Saturday, April 30th 2022, 5 pm (Hofgarten)
Talk with Max Dax: Wednesday, May 11th 2022, 7 pm
Book presentation by Wolfgang Ullrich, Art after the End of its Autonomy: Wednesday, May 25th 2022, 7 pm
WHERE?
Haus am Lützowplatz
Fördererkreis Kulturzentrum Berlin e.V.
Lützowplatz 9
10785 Berlin-Tiergarten
