Kreissl & Kerber: First Thing Tomorrow Morning

February 28 – April 13, 2008

Number 35 is pleased to present First Thing Tomorrow Morning, a site-specific installation by Berlin based duo, Kreissl & Kerber.

Walking around the streets of New York City, one will surely encounter a building enshrouded in scaffolding. Whether the temporary structure was erected so that the existing structure can be restored or destroyed and rebuilt, the large flat planks of blue plywood are easily a signal for an architectural shift. It is the observation of this secondary architectural phenomenon, supporting constructions and temporary structures, that is the starting point for Kreissl & Kerber's fragile architectural landscapes.

Kreissl & Kerber are attracted by the places "at which a town's system of order breaks" because these places are free from narrow-minded planning regulations, which liberate them for uncommon architectural ideas and individual solutions. From a vocabulary of forms, the duo develops structures and patterns, computer generated vector-drawings and three-dimensional sketches, which they then assemble into landscapes and urban panorama.

Landscapes begin where the detail, the multiplicity of individual sites, moves into the background and the entirety begins. The idea of the entirety creates itself in the viewer and the ideal standpoint. Kreissl & Kerber, however, are not only interested in the whole, but in the shift in standpoint that dismantles the landscape into individual elements. Movement is in many ways a constituting element in the duos installations.

Individual sculptural elements often remain without a recognizable function and yet are multifunctional at the same time. Their constructions are always answers to the question of how the abundance of their own artistic material can be presented in a sculpturally consistent and yet sensual form. They seek high tech materials; yet in their unusual compositions endow these with a different function than the conventionally intended one. In such an experimental employment the building blocks are extremely reduced and brought to the limits of their inherent possibilities as construction elements.

Alexa Kreissl and Daniel Kerber have been working collaboratively since 1992. They have exhibited in Germany, Japan, Italy, and California. This is their second exhibition in New York.

“The New Museum and the New Lower East Side Gallery Scene”, Gallery & Studio, Ed McCormack, July 1, 2008.