Hubert Czerepok, 'Madness Is Like Gravity', 2011, neon, 200 x 190 cm. Photo courtesy of the gallery
The exhibition at the Żak-Branicka Gallery by Hubert Czerepok focuses on humanity's dream of attaining omniscience and something near godliness
Czerepok is interested in the border between enlightenment and possession, between the Faustian concepts of good and evil. He uses perfection to point out the imperfect, logic to point out the irrational. He draws his subject matter and style from the media - news, politics, science and philosophy - and draws out its contradictions and idiosyncrasies.
Lux Aeterna is the artist's second exhibition at the ŻAK | BRANICKA Gallery after Haunebu, which explored conspiracy theories in history. The title of the current exhibition is drawn from one of the video works in the series, potraying the internal journey of a man very much inspired by the writings of Romantic poets and idealist politicians set against totalitarian tyrants from various corners of the world - Juliusz Słowacki, Thomas Jefferson, Anders Breivik, Adolf Hitler. Shot in Norway, it uses the beauty of the rural landscape to allude to the might of the natural world. The background to this monologue builds with breathtaking scenery of the country's, inspired in great measure by the style of cinematography popular in Nazi Germany, perfected by the likes of Leni Riefenstahl. The film is a treatise of utopian theories and the pursuit of power.
Czerepok's work on the film coincided with events on the Norwegian island of Utøya in July 2011 when the right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik murdered 77 people. It was later revealed that during the murder Breivik was listening to a loop of Clint Mansell's work Lux Aeterna. Czerepok also addresses the failure of the enlightenment in his sculpture Norm of Lost 50 Micrograms, drawing from the research of scientists who declared that over the past hundred years 50 micrograms have inexplicably vanished from the model kilogram stored at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sèvres.
According to the exhibition curators, Lux Aeterna is an exhibition about the dream of taking control of matter and life, where the vanity of enlightenment is also madness. Madness is, according to Czerepok, like vertigo: it imperceptibly and definitively seduces, it is irreversible, which is why one of his works quotes the Joker from The Dark Knight: “Madness is like gravity. All it takes is a little push.
Hubert Czerepok was born 1973 in Słubice, Poland. He lives and works in Wrocław.
The exhibition opens on the 27th of January 2012 at 18:00. It runs between the 28th of January - 21st of April 2012.
Żak-Branicka Gallery
Lindenstr. 34-35
10969 Berlin
Source: www.zak-branicka.com