Poster by Luis Schrümpf

Exhibition Text

Have you ever been so drawn to the idea of a place you keep that one special stone on a shrine back home? Said you are crazy about this or that object? Kept something that is slowly rotting because it reminds you of someone you used to love? The objects we collect persist as traces of memories—which is also the basis of the view that anyone who does not collect something is 'nothing but a moron, a pathetic human wreck' (Baudrillard, The System of Objects). Following Susan Stewart's thoughts on objects as (anti)souvenirs we can distinguish two kinds of objects: those that transform meaning into materiality and those objects that transform materiality into meaning. Both remain preserved through the collector’s personal narrative woven inside, bringing time to a standstill. The memory of the place, a feeling or specific body, is replaced by the memory of the object—presenting both a surplus and lack of significance.

Gassenprojects second exhibition entitled Reviewing Unattended Remnants examines how artists operate as archivists of intimate memory, collecting not only material objects but also intangible experiences—rituals, sensations, and childhood recollections. The exhibition's title borrows from the forensic concept of “unattended remnants” to describe the condition of memories and objects that persist without archival care, reminiscent of personal stories no one is capable of telling if left behind. Through subjective acts of collection and recontextualization that privilege personal significance over functional or commercial value objects can be charged with new meanings and shaped by subjective narratives. At the center of Gassenproject’s second exhibition are two artists, Kay Yoon and Zoë Field. The selected works of both artists deal with the direct affects that arise in the context of objects left behind, ranging from family heirlooms and cultural heritage to objects abandoned in public spaces or exist as remnants of past relationships. The exhibition takes place in the retail space of a former beauty store located in the transition area near the main entrance of S+U Alexanderplatz. Two glass fronts and plywood walls built into an arch of the train station's historic layout the retail space evokes notions of a chamber encapsulated in the clockwork of motion in the surrounding transition area.

As we move through a scenery we filter out much of the surroundings and focus on what we as narrator of our personal story tell and claim as significant for the plot that is our own life.

Within her artistic practice Zoë Field works with different mediums such as sculpture, photography, printmaking and text, through which she formalizes collected images and found materials into visual as well as textual narratives, iconographies and object forms. Her artistic practice is shaped by layering of materiality that can be described as personal storytelling—positioned between exploration and translation. The materialized affect becomes preserved within an unfolding object-narration that reveals the romance of what was once concealed, creating unexpected intimacy through its removal from familiar surroundings into charged new meanings.

A similar feeling of intimacy can be found when encountering the work of Kay Yoon who integrates traditional ceremonial objects within her artistic practice that is rooted within the spectral realms among cultural memory, technological mediation, and embodied ritual. Her practice emerges from the emotional terrain of displacement and cultural crossing. Through the integration of both collected ceremonial objects and found industrial materials, Yoon’s artistic practice is shaped by ahistoricism, replacing history with a new order beyond the realm of temporality. While working with sculpture, installations, and performance, Yoon creates spaces where people can engage physically with her artworks, probing the gap between comfort and control, between the body’s labor and the objects that remain. For Yoon, the medium is like a boat, a ship for communication. Through reshaping narratives around the remnants of cultural heritage and heirlooms Yoon navigates family traditions within an ever changing future.

The notion of collecting and recontextualization that is central to both Yoon’s and Field’s artistic practices finds its continuation in this accompanying exhibition catalogue. Both participating artists contribute written and visual works that operate both as documentation and as autonomous artistic work. Accompanying the catalogue is a written contribution by the artist and writer Stilli, entitled SUNLIGHT THROUGH TYPE O GREEN // DEAD ROCKSTAR touching on her exploration of collecting through the lens of hauntology, exploring the entanglements of parasitism, and recursive subjectivity across sonic, textual, and spatial forms. Held by a detachable rubberband, the individual contributions become fragmented by taking out single pages and reorganizing the sequences. A disassembled collection of single A4 pages reminiscent of magazine pages pinned to a wall in a child’s room.

Alongside the exhibition catalogue Gassenprojects composed a fragrance that stands both for the memory of the space and for the collectible—offering an example rather than sample, a metaphor rather than metonymy. The fragrance is inspired by the location of S+U Alexanderplatz where sweet artificial scents that remind us of cheap makeup powder and strawberry milkshake dissipate and leave us with the coldness of wet stone floors, darkened by many shoe soles carrying us to the next destination and leaving a trace of worn off materiality. The multicolored flacon becomes an object added to a personal collection of narration.

Curated by Sophie Franziska Schultz & Luis Schrümpf

Photos by Max Eulitz