MEYER*KAINER curated by Ei Arakawa
„curated by_vienna 2013 Why Painting Now?“

Ei Arakawa is a performance artist. Working almost always collaboratively, his projects structurally evade forms of production that could be ascribed to, or referred back to, a single subject. Along with Henning Bohl and Nora Schultz, he produced Non-Solo Show, Non-Group Show at the Franco Soffiantino Gallery in Turin in 2008. Another version of it followed at the Kunsthalle Zurich in 2009. Since 2005, Arakawa has been part of the collective Grand Openings. Grand Openings creates a temporal situation in which all forms of performances (and objects) coexist and are negotiated. Grand Openings performed at the MUMOK in Vienna in 2008 and at the MoMA in New York in 2011. Since 2007, Arakawa started to make performances working with paintings created by his fellow artists as well as historical painters. In 2012 he showed Bodycard Testimonials together with Nikolas Gambaroff at Meyer Kainer, Vienna.

Curated by is an exhibition event that takes place under a designated theme in Viennese galleries every year, curated by international curators and artists in each gallery. This year it is about painting and the expansions of the medium into the social. At Meyer Kainer the curator for 2013 is the New York based Japanese artist Ei Arakawa. “I am a performance artist based in New York, and collaborated and be collaborating with all artists here in recent years. Many of them are painters except Sergei Tcherepnin, who is a composer. Each collaboration occurs and develops on its own reasons and necessities. There is absolutely no formula how to work with a painting. How this painting could be performed? How I could engage with this painting? Many works here are a proposition for future. When one stares onto Kerstin Brätsch’s glass paintings, one sees LIGHT in there. It could be natural light or artificial light. She created a new video after the Hawaiian volcanic goddess Pele, where I was also present with her. In our collaboration, her material is now an important mediator of social and abstract situation between here and Fukushima, Japan. Jutta Koether gave me a new proposal. As I am responsible for this space situation, I have to handle the strip of paintings to negotiate with surroundings. For me, strips are devices to make a decision, draw an idea, and exert a movement. I want visitor to go over it at least once during the exhibition. When I made a performance called "Concrete Escort I. II. III. IV." at Gutai exhibition in New York, I asked Amy Sillman to participate. She created 50 costumes out of 2 thick full-color exhibition catalogues. They became the uniform of various painterly activities. Shimon Minamikawa created new fabric work, which quietly observes this space from above. This is the 3rd of in its series. All has a same specific proportion of four square, and often a performance happens in front of it or behind of it. Silke Otto-Knapp created a new landscape painting, which took a seat next to Trisha Brown painting. With a permission of artist, I installed in this way to evoke a construction of theatre that continues to other part of this exhibition. The sound installation by Henning Bohl, Sergei Tcherepnin, and myself are two years old. However, as long as the sound is distributed through bike helmet paintings using transducers, all is coming to present. Sports helmets are in quite dynamic orientations in the video. Nikolas Gambaroff made masks for the corner. This is a self-portrait of artist as Georgian. Some artists in this show traveled to Tbilisi, Georgia in recent years. I am planning to go there again next summer, and this mask might come with us to perform.”