Hard Core, Soft Edges, 2023
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Only air and water could pass through a transparent tube and see inside the concrete what remained invisible to the rest. No one decided whether the object would remain standing as a monument or collapse into a ruin. When its armor was removed, the object was a monument for a second. Then it was a ruin.
Under its weight, the ruin trapped the drawings that recalled moments lived in the city and which were captured on fabric. Over time, the ruin fell to pieces, until one day the remains of a canvas on which someone had drawn something were recovered from the rubble.
“Hard Core Soft Edges” is the collaborative exchange process between artists Jelena Fuzinato and Patricia Sandonis, rendering visible new, undetermined and open-ended results. In preparation for the site-specific work, rainwater was collected from the Bärenzwinger to mix the concrete used for the sculptures. Alongside collected objects, such as natural fragments, urban waste and scattered trash found in and around the Bärenzwinger, this fusion solidifies their collaboration. A large conversational drawing is placed under and draped around one of the objects, waiting for the audience to read the private and public histories it depicts.
“Hard Core Soft Edges” borrows its visual language from that of a construction site, and the choice of objects is based on the presumed needs and wants of the space, creating stairs for possibly descending to the moat and a replica of one of the decorative stones. Small lingering objects enhancing the existing architecture mark the fine line between intention and un-intention, and are waiting to be picked up on or left behind.
In both its execution and its form, the work touches upon visibility/invisibility, use, meaning, memory and the question of authorship. Resonating with the temporality and ephemerality of the city landscape, it too remains open to influences throughout the exhibition, and could be read as a future ruin or a monument for the present.
Cleo Wächter & Lusin Reinsch
Curatorial Text for the exhibition “Promising Premises”
Bärenzwinger, Berlin 2023
