From 12 September 2024 to 12 January 2025, Haus am Waldsee is presenting the artistic work of Gisèle Vienne (*1976) for the first time in Berlin in cooperation with the Georg-Kolbe-Museum and the Sophiensælen. Haus am Waldsee is hosting a large solo exhibition that spans the entire building. Over the past 25 years, the French-Austrian artist, choreographer and director has created a complex and idiosyncratic body of work that questions our models of perception and invents artistic languages to pave the way for structural social change. Vienne’s creations, both on stage and in her visual practice, are developed in collaboration with dancers and actors and are often animated by anthropomorphic figures and puppets to explore the sensuality, anger and creativity of countercultures in all their subversive potential. Combining his philosophical influences with his rich aesthetic experience, his work on stage and elsewhere seeks to overturn prevailing structures and develop new artistic forms that attempt to codify the world differently.
Image above: Gisèle Vienne, L’Etang, 2020, Foto: Estelle Hanania © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024
Vienne works predominantly on stage, where she expands her practice by incorporating mainly life-size puppets that mainly represent young people. Her use of puppets, situated in figurative sculpture, unfolds a decidedly political dimension in relation to the body as a place where culturally and socially constructed perceptual dispositives can be questioned, criticised and possibly dissolved. By staging the longings and fears of a youth in crisis, she recognises the feelings of her protagonists in all their political and social aspects. Vienne’s work is part of a struggle against standardising, authoritarian forces that affect the psyche and body. ‘Gisèle Vienne embarks on a meticulous, persistent and demanding quest. She explores the framework of intelligibility that determines our gestures, our imagination and our collective myths, our identities, our morals and ultimately the social order.’ [1]
The exhibition brings together the life-size puppets that Vienne has created over the last twenty years in a carefully composed installation alongside a collection of photographs by the artist that illustrate the diverse spectrum of the puppets. The staging of the exhibition in the form of a puppet show was developed specifically for the architecture of the Haus am Waldsee, where superimpositions of language, sound and movement are contrasted with the stillness and immobility of the exhibited puppets. Here Vienne creates a field of tension between self-determination and heteronomy and illuminates moments that ‘cause consciousness to shatter’. The title This Causes Consciousness to Fracture is borrowed from a track from the album Patterns of Consciousness (Important Records, 2017) by Caterina Barbieri, Vienne’s collaborator for the stage play Extra Life (2023).
The exhibition is part of a collaboration between the Haus am Waldsee, the Georg Kolbe Museum and the Sophiensælen. The three institutions are bringing Vienne’s work in all its complexity to the city as part of Berlin Art Week 2024 and presenting different approaches to her multifaceted practice, which is located between photography, sculpture and installation, film, choreography and theatre. Haus am Waldsee opens This Causes Consciousness to Fracture on 11.9.2024 (exhibition from 12.9.24 – 12.1.25). The exhibition I know that I can double myself opens at the Georg Kolbe Museum. Gisèle Vienne and the dolls of the avant-garde on 12.9.2024 (exhibition from 13.9.24 – 9.3.25). The film Jerk by Gisèle Vienne will be presented as part of an artist talk between Gisèle Vienne and Florentina Holzinger at the Sophiensaele on 15 September 2024. The performances of Crowd will be shown there on 14/15/16 November 2024.
Gisèle Vienne is a French-Austrian artist, choreographer, theatre and film director. She has been trained in the visual arts since childhood by her mother, Dorothéa Vienne-Pollak. She studied dance and music, philosophy and puppetry. Over the past twenty years, her work has toured Europe, Asia and America, including the productions Showroomdummies (2001/2009/2013/2020), I Apologise (2004), Kindertotenlieder (2007), Jerk (2008), This Is How You Will Disappear (2010), LAST SPRING: A Prequel (2011), The Ventriloquists Convention (2015) in collaboration with Puppentheater Halle, Crowd (2017), L’Etang (2021) and EXTRA LIFE (2023, invited to Theatertreffen 2024). Vienne’s photographs and installations have been exhibited in numerous museums, including the Whitney Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires and the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva. She has published two books: JERK/Through Their Tears (2011) in collaboration with Jonathan Capdevielle, Dennis Cooper and Peter Rehberg and 40 PORTRAITS (2003-2008) in collaboration with Dennis Cooper and Pierre Dourthe (2012). Their work has led to various publications and the original music from their shows to several albums.
As part of the presentations in Berlin, a new publication dedicated to the joint work of Gisèle Vienne and Estelle Hanania will appear in autumn. With texts by Anna Gritz and Elsa Dorlin. Published by Haus am Waldsee in collaboration with Spector Books. 180 pages, German/English/French, 152 colour illustrations, hardcover. On site at Haus am Waldsee and Georg Kolbe Museum: 49 euros / In bookshops: 78 euros.
WHEN?
Thursday, 12.9.2024 – Sunday, 12.1.2025
Haus am Waldsee:
Exhibition, sculpture park and café are open Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 6pm.
Every 2nd Friday of the month: 11 am to 8 pm.
Open on public holidays (except 24, 25 and 31 December)
Georg Kolbe Museum:
Wednesday to Monday, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
WHERE?
Haus am Waldsee
Argentinische Allee 30
14163 Berlin
Georg Kolbe museum
Sensburger Allee 25
14055 Berlin
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