INTERVIEW: MICHAIL PIRGELIS

from the top: Installation views, Michail Pirgelis, 'adopted', Sprüth Magers Berlin, February 7 - March 5, 2014 / Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin / © Michail Pirgelis

Wanting to become an archeologist when he was a child, greek artist Michail Pirgelis today works with other and much larger kinds of artefacts: He employs original fragments of aeronautic bodies, transformed into wall-objects, giant sculptures or room-filling floor installations. His first airplane object ‘Ikarus’, which he created in 2001, already introduced the dialectic between flying’s symbolic weightlessness and its distressingly massive construction components. Playing on this ambiguity, Pirgelis continues to prepare dismantled airplane modules, transforming its technical skeleton into graceful objects. As in his recent solo-show “adopted” at Sprüth Magers Berlin [photos], the awareness of a small threshold between the tragic relict and the implied elevation is always present. In a short interview with the Cologne-based artist, Michail told us about his practice and what the dream of flying implies to him.

INTERVIEW: KM TEMPORAER

portrait shot: Lennart and Elisa © photo by Trevor Good // installation images: "surplus living" exhibition at km temperer during 14/03/2014 - 23/03/2014, courtesy the artists, Copyright 2014 IG Photography

Anna-Lena Werner: Elisa and Lennart, in 2012 you founded KM Temporaer
 – an off-space for art in Berlin. Many of your exhibitions profoundly stress 
the political relation between the digital world and the art market. They also posed critical questions to current tendencies of artistic positioning. What was the initial motivation to start KM Temporaer?

Elisa R. Linn: We were especially interested in the format of the thematic group exhibition as a testing field to make constellations in a transdisciplinary process that isn’t necessarily dependant on art. With our projects we have tried to investigate the potential of this exhibition format and the idea of creating sustained dialogues which aren’t limited to a specific part of the art scene and instead address many actors with different backgrounds entering into interaction
 with each other.

Lennart Wolff: The artist selection therefore was a major step for activating this potential. We consciously choose artists positioned at the intersection between rejecting marketing systems, young emerging artists and those who are commercially successful and represented by 
galleries. An important aspect is also to disclose different generational, cultural 
and social influences that characterize and shape the creative practice 
and provide individual views on certain socially relevant issues. Thus
 displaying contradictory artistic positions enabled us to contextualize
 the art works in a new way as well as to contemplate and reflect on the
 art pieces considering multiple perspectives.

ART COLOGNE 2014

Art Cologne 2014 Dike Blair at booth Linn Lühn, Düsseldorf Florian Meisenberg at booth Wentrup, Berlin Grayson Revoir at booth Jan Kaps, Cologne Michail Pirgelis at booth Sprüth Magers, Berlin, London Tatiana Trouve at booth Johann König, Berlin Paul Cowan and Tony Lewis COLLABORATION at booth Shane Campell, Chicago David Ostrowski at booth Peres Projects, Berlin Liam Gillick at booth Kerlin Gallery, Dublin // all images by artfridge // Courtesy the galleries // © the artists

"The white colour on the painting has a different tone, than the one on the wall behind it," a galerist explains a curious visitor, who was interested in the artist's motivation to present a blank canvas at the art fair. Its official: The new minimalism hit its peak. This is one of the most predominant trends, currently displayed at the 48th edition of ART COLOGNE: From predecessors, such as Günther Förg (Galerie Bärbel Grässlin) and Imi Knöbel (Galerie Nächst St. Stephan), to current emerging artists, such as Sergej Jensen (Galerie Neu), David Ostrowski (Peres Projects), Michail Pirgelis (Sprüth Magers) and Paul Czerlitzki (Laurent Godin) – minimal and beautiful, physically scant and reduced wall objects are setting the tone of the fair's contemporary segment in 2014.