transience…
thought or matter transforming
to attain another state
arrest the moment when it’s neither its history nor its future
unformed, deformed
  or
a broken thing without determination
when the sum has unbecome
to be parts again
still informed by its antecedence but free
to connect with what surrounds it
  or
remain a fragment
just enough of a structure to house the hermit crab of imagination
A thing finished is claustrophobic,
there is no more space for thought to swirl and exhale into the future.
accepting or rejecting are the only actions left.
  you can extrapolate from the unfinished unguided by intentions.

give material its own agency and try to keep it in suspended tension
there it is composing the neither/nor
to let it settle only
to break apart and create an unintended space or a frail composition.

just be material
acting with other material
let it flow and spill through you
as the imperfect and  leaking conductor.

 

(a.w., 2021)

Alexander Weiss is a visual artist who has spent much of his time researching and traveling in New York, Marseilles, Bogotá, Caracas and living in the Venezuelan rain forest for a year. Inhabiting extremely different and diverse spaces and cultural contexts to find resonance and a place where he can come to terms with the necessity of creating, using methodes and techniques of painting while simultaneously being cognizant of the historical weight that is associated with the form he is driven by and is most immersed in.

With his ever-evolving ideas, Weiss is critically engaged with concepts of nomadic subjectivity, new materialism and the abstraction of inner alienation. Even though Weiss works with constellations of different media and mediums such as collage photography and the utilization of diverse textural materials, his primary praxis involves the classical canvas and diverse techniques on painting itself.

Weiss’s most recent oeuvre explores the boundaries between subjectivity and agency, the dissolution of self-ness, potentials of inclusive relations with multiple co-actors. He is concerned with questions of mutuality, difference, marginality and materiality in order to explore alternative perspectives. Notions of materiality and coexistence are central to Weiss’s ethically and socio-politically driven practice of painting. Yet they do not border on the obvious political notions of the imagery confining itself to a rigidly codified visual narrative.

Seeking for ways to challenge the domination of his own inner Eurocentric views and culturally specific presentations of art alongside it. Alex’s interest as a traveler marked a generative potential of visuality coming from diverse perspectives and places he extensively traveled through and lived in. Weiss’s initial visit to New York in 1995 and his subsequent residence through 2010, further brought an important shift to his own practice. For he saw, first hand the breath of the contemporary New York art scene and the creative possibilities that were non-institutional yet at the same time open to serious engagement on the very creative process itself. During this period Weiss found much resonance acquiring diverse techniques and also different modalities to work with the canvas in his post-post structural modern world. In order to deepen his research and to further comprehend the contrasting perspectives that lay in front of him, Weiss immediately immersed himself in the complexities of our current ideas and is continiously engaged in pushing his process further.

Kunstpunkt Berlin

at Kunstpunkt Berlin,  September 2022

1995-2010         New York, New York

2010-present   Berlin, Germany

lives and works in Berlin

 

 

 

 

selected exhibitions

2024

“camels are whispering
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, HdKW, Berlin

2023

“camels are whispering
Rencontres Paris/Berlin, MEP (Maison Europeenne De La Photographie), Paris
vimeo link

“changing trees”
video installation with Eunice Martens, Ibrahim Quraishi, Ruben Gonzales
CTM Festival Vorspiel, Silent Green, Berlin

2022
“the truth ain’t waterproof”
Kunstpunkt Berlin          click for press
curated with Neustart Stipendium 2022

2021
“camels are whispering ”
video edit for Ibrahim Quraishi
Connected Alienation/Vernetzte Entfremdung
Kunstraum Bethanien, Berlin

2018

“shared stories”
with I.Quraishi
Galerie Wedding

“massage matress-message matters”
New Day Gallery, Berlin

2015
“reformer”
nationalmuseum, Berlin

2013
“dumb angels”
II II // I Projectspace, Berlin

2012
“acid victories”
Cussler art space, Berlin
“Gruppenausstellung”
Galerie Schmidtmarc, Berlin

2011
“Pure Freude”
neues museum, Berlin
Gruppenausstellung

2010
“too many butterflies”
Forsyth Projects, NY, NY
Gruppenausstellung

“dirty light”
Forgotten Bar/Galerie im         Regierungsviertel, Berlin
Gruppenausstellung

2009
“down below it’s chaos”
Artjail ,NY, NY
Gruppenausstellung

“Berlin-New York”
Forgotten Bar/ Galerie im       Regierungsviertel, Berlin

2008/2009
“all i want is nothing”
conceptual exhibit in to be demolished   building,
Lower East Side-Chinatown NY, NY

2008
“I want a little sugar in my bowl”
Asia Song Society, ASS Gallery,NY, NY
Groupshow curated by Terence Koh

2006
“In the shadow of Babel”
Gallery 351, NY

2004
“Greetings from Chelsea”
Edward Thorp Gallery NY, NY
Groupshow

(“Art Guide New York Times”, July 2004)

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