For the first time we were showing a second exhibition simultaneously in the exhibition hall.

TIMES was showing works by Vanessa Beecroft, Dimitris Tzamouranis and Thomas Judisch.

At the center of this exhibition was the video work “VB48” by Vanessa Beecroft.

On July 3, 2001, shortly before the G8 conference in Genoa, the Italian-British artist Vanessa Beecroft staged African migrant women in the hall of the Palazzo Ducale in the manner of a tableau vivant. Her Caravaggio-esque work plays on the contrast of power embodied by the city‘s palaces and the vulnerability of the African migrants who stand lost outside its walls.

The video work was flanked by paintings by the Greek artist Dimitris Tzamouranis. The concept underlying the paintings is based on the use of a rhetorical figure. In these paintings, Tzamouranis works with the figure of reversal. He shows something in them that he basically doesn‘t show at all.
His seascapes denote very precise places, identified by the geographic coordinates of the titles. In the past, refugees trying to reach Europe illegally sank and died there with their ships. They wanted to reach Greece or Italy from North Africa via various routes. The artist sailed his boat from Kalamata in Greece, his native town, following these escape routes. To where the tragedies happened. Dimitris Tzamouranis has entered the scene of the accident on a nautical chart that he created, which accompanies his “Mare Nostrum” pictures. Basically, this turns his works into memorabilia. With the help of painted allegories, they keep the memory of the catastrophes alive. Absence and presence, the dead and the sea, are dialectically related to each other.
Unlike in so many seascapes of the past, the sea does not appear here as a sublime natural wonder that the viewer should celebrate and marvel at with devotion, but rather as a kind of roaring monster*.

A wall of sleeping bags was positioned next to these works in the middle of the room. A closer look reveals that the cases are filled with newspaper. Stuffed to the brim with daily reports of political events from all over the world. So no real sleeping bags after all, just the romantic image of a travel group or even the sad reality of those who are fleeing and looking for protection?

The sculpture „Tausend und eine Nacht“ by the Dresden sculptor Thomas Judisch invites you to use it. Provides support and helps to connect with the works.

Vanessa Beecroft | Courtesy Sammlung Reinking

Dimitris Tzamouranis | Courtesy Sammlung Reinking / Galerie Michael Haas

Thomas Judisch | Courtesy the Artist

*from: Journey of Life. On the "Mare Nostrum" pictures by Dimitris Tzamouranis, Michael Stoeber, 2017.