Opening Reception, April, 28th, Friday, 7 pm
28.4. Midissage am 16 Juni ab 19 Uhr
und verlängert bis 14. Juli, mit arbiträren Öffnungszeiten & nach Vereinbarung
Performance der Zugvögel am 14 Juli, um 20 & 21 Uhr: Träumen mit Bäumen & Der Atlas des Uranus
Birch Hayes calls his first exhibition in Berlin, at the Crystal Ball gallery the Atlas of Uranus. In a way, this is an extremely apt description for the works presented by the American artist. Hayes’ elaborate, detailed drawings sometimes seem like cartographies of an unknown world or even like surfaces of a distant planet. This may be due to the homogeneous but alien organic presence of the structures depicted and their particular expansiveness of perspective. In this respect, the drawings evoke an almost authentic presence, familiar from scientific illustrations, biological diagrams, and drawings based on nature. Certain structures appear as if cut into, at these points their structure becomes apparent and explainable. All discovered forms and things show themselves. Hayes uses these attributes masterfully, creating a real plane, but presenting us not with a familiar one, but with an extraordinary glimpse into a mysterious, fantastic world that seems strangely real. Physical structures lie, stick, grow in and out with other substances. Things float, buzz, are interconnected, and the motifs sketch a specific dreamy variety. Birch Hayes drawings in this way have similarity in strategy to science fiction, as the latter also repeatedly indulges in describing the connections and details in order to assert reality. The artist Birch Hayes, however, has no plan or sense of mission in this direction at all. He calls the exhibition of his black and white and color works Uranian Atlas, because that is how they appear to him. Hayes draws to enter a dreamy state of meditation. He has no specific ideas from the beginning, but in an automatic, unconscious formulation also discovers one form next to the other and records it in the picture. But it is thanks to this idiosyncratic and particular position of Haye’s work that the worlds and landscapes can be explored light-footedly, as if we have now gained access to a world of the unconscious while awake. Lydia Karstadt.