Image Credit and Courtesy: Anna-Sophie Berger, Bianca Gamser, and Evan Ifekoya.
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is pleased to announce Final Projects: Group LIV, exhibiting three bodies of work produced by our Artists and Architects-in-Residence, Anna-Sophie Berger, Bianca Gamser, and Evan Ifekoya. Final Projects: Group LIV marks the culmination of the 54th iteration of the Artists and Architects-in-Residence Program at the Mackey Apartments.
Hours
OPENING RECEPTION FOR FINAL PROJECTS: LIV
Mackey Apartments and Garage Top
Thursday, March 7, 6pm - 8pm
ANNA-SOPHIE BERGER AND BIANCA GAMSER EXHIBITIONS
Mackey Apartments and Garage Top
Friday, March 8 — Sunday, March 10, 1 pm-5 pm
EVAN IFEKOYA INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION
Original Muscle Beach, Santa Monica
16 Arcadia Terrace
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Friday, March 8 and Saturday, March 9, 11 am-2 pm
Mackey Apartments and Garage Top
Sunday, March 10, 2 pm-6 pm
Artists
ANNA-SOPHIE BERGER
Drawing from her 2022 exhibition in Mexico City titled Wealth and Propriety, Anna-Sophie Berger continues her investigation into historical and contemporary notions of sumptuary laws and the economical relevance of scarcity as it pertains to materials in general and to clothing and fabric specifically. Berger devised a faux-scientific graph that connects clothing styles and dimensions with economic and moral qualities: length pertaining to relative wealth, width pertaining to relative propriety. In an initial series of graphic wall pieces, she labeled the roughly body sized line drawings based on her graph with corresponding word combinations such as “wealthy and lewd” or “poor and proper”.
The new series for her project in LA attempts the abstraction of these line drawings into graphic shapes applied in fabric based stitched wall panels and by consequence a blurring of their if purely fictional pretension at the legibility of clothing signs.
Anna-Sophie Berger (b. 1989, Vienna, Austria) is an artist living and working in New York and Vienna. She has had solo exhibitions at MAK, Vienna (2023); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2020); Cell Project Space, London (2019); MUMOK, Vienna (2016); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2016); Ludlow 38, NY (2015); White Flag Projects, St. Louis (2015); and Belvedere21, Vienna (2014); among others. She has recently participated in group exhibitions at the Pictures Collection of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2022); The Glucksman, Cork (2022); MACRO Museum, Rome (2021); MAK, Austria (2019); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2019); Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (2018); S.M.A.K., Ghent (2018); Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (2018); Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2017); Kunstverein Munchen, Munich (2017). She is the recipient of the 2017 Ars Viva Fine Arts Prize in Germany and the 2016 Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize, Austria and a 2023 recipient of the Pollock Krasner grant.
BIANCA GAMSER
Utilizing origin myths about the beginning of architecture, Bianca Gamser works to interrogate these supposed narratives, dating back to Vitruvius. At their core, this historical framing works in two parts, to separate humans from their natural environment; architecture as a shelter from weather; and to build a position to rebuke; the modernist incorporation of surroundings into the architecture itself. The latter can also be seen in R.M. Schindler’s writings, “The man of the future does not try to escape the elements. He will rule them.” Through the lens of contemporary construction practices and its harmful effects on the environment, the notion of architecture providing refuge from nature has turned into its active destruction of the natural environment. The effects can also be seen through unusual weather patterns, including recents years of heavy rainfall in Southern California, following years of drought.
Gamser ties these ideas together by making the architecture itself the collection site and source of rainfall. Rather than architecture as a protective force from the natural environment, R.M. Schindler’s Modernist Mid-City Mackey Apartments functions as the ecosystem which produces rain. Here the separations outlined in the origin myth dissolve to create a holistic architecture that works with the environment, rather than against it.
Bianca Gamser, is a Vienna-based architect and art historian who studied at both the Vienna University of Technology and the University of Vienna. Gamser's work aims to highlight potentials and grievances through the tools of architecture, often through interventions in public space.
She has participated in exhibitions and workshops in Europe, including the Lakeside Dancers Club, based on a design by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Atelier Bow-Wow for HORST arts & music festival in Holsbeek, at the Vienna Biennale with the installation Ephemeral Temporalities and the Vienna Design Week with the group work VEBSHTUL. Several of her works, including her latest installation STILL FRIEDEN were awarded with grants and special recognitions. Besides her artistic practice at the intersection of art and architecture, Gamser has been active in various Viennese collectives, works as a set designer and has taught at the Vienna University of Technology.
EVAN IFEKOYA
Thursday, March 7, 6-8pm, Mackey Apartments
Friday, March 8, 11am-2pm, Original Muscle Beach, Santa Monica
Saturday, March 9, 11am-2pm, Original Muscle Beach, Santa Monica
Sunday, March 10, 2-6pm, Mackey Apartments
Through their engagement with the city, Evan Ifekoya traces the history of Los Angeles public exercise spaces and centers strength training as a physical and spiritual guide. As public spaces that focus on the development and presentation of the body, Ifekoya prioritizes bodies that are often marginalized from these spaces.
Constructing an intervention over two sites, their live/work space at the Mackey Apartments and Original Muscle Beach, Santa Monica, Ifekoya brings ‘Calabash, Kettlebell and Cascarilla’ - an interactive installation and guided audio journey.
At the Original Muscle Beach, Santa Monica (the 1930s era outdoor gym, not to be confused with the later Muscle Beach Venice Beach) Ifekoya brings an interactive sound installation and provides guidance on pull up progressions and other ways of making use of the equipment. With an emphasis on the importance of good technique and form; this interactive installation offers affirmation, encouragement, and support within an intimidating environment for those not familiar.
Through these interventions, Ifekoya makes a ceremony of adaptation and strength, creating a dialogue between notions of health and harmony.
Evan Ifekoya is an interdisciplinary artist seeking greater embodiment for all, through sound. Their work in community organizing, installation, performance, text and video is an extension of their calling as a spiritual practitioner. They view art as a site where resources can be both redistributed and renegotiated, whilst challenging the implicit rules and hierarchies of public and social space. Strategies of space holding through architectural interventions, ritual and immersive sonic installations enable them to make a practice of living in order not to turn to despair.
They established the collectively run and QTIBPOC (queer, trans*, intersex, black and people of color) led Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.) in 2018. Upcoming presentations include immersive installations for ARoS Denmark (2023), Lagos Biennial and ICA VCU (both 2024). They have presented exhibitions, moving image and performances across UK, Europe and Internationally, most recently: Guest Artist Space Lagos (2023), a solo exhibition at Migros Museum, Zurich and a moving image commission with LUX in collaboration with University of Reading (2022); Herbert Art Gallery and Museum as nominees of the Turner Prize (with B.O.S.S. 2021); Gus Fischer New Zealand (2020); De Appel Netherlands (2019) and Gasworks London (2018).
The Artists & Architects-in-Residence Program at the Mackey Apartments is funded by the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport, in cooperation with the MAK — Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna.