AGAINST THE WALL — HVW8 BERLIN
HVW8 Gallery Berlin
HVW8 Gallery Berlin is pleased to present AGAINST THE WALL, a group show by Berlin-based artists Tommy Camerno, Lexia Hachtmann and Navot Miller. Tracing the physicality of the linguistic preposition, a device expressing the relation between words in a sentence, the exhibition meditates on the positioning of disparate objects to signify coexisting worlds. Bringing together evocative constructions in painting, drawing and sculpture, AGAINST THE WALL fosters a tender perspective on the connections that bind emotional experiences in physical space.
A common thread in the work of Tommy Camerno, Lexia Hachtmann and Navot Miller is the construction of sprawling narratives through carefully assembled layers of meaning. In Miller’s colour-block water pastels, fragments of contrasting images are compressed together like modular memories. His merging of public and private space in Zach and Flowers (2020) signals the entwined nuances of his queer identity and Orthodox Jewish faith, united emblematically with the peyes (‘sidelocks’ in Yiddish).
All elements are parts of the puzzle connecting simultaneous worlds — an idea which also manifests in Hachtmann’s large-scale acrylic painting Fragile (2020). This room with multiple views is suspended like a moving image frame — press play, and it could all collapse in different directions. A mountain picture hung on the wall and the Jenga game frozen in action on the table are examples of embedded motifs that playfully cite other moments in her work: the patchwork mountain Die Hacht (2019) and the ongoing stack of sketches, Archive Tower (2018-). Working with a similar fluidity, Camerno composes lucid realms of space, often rendered in overlapping series that conjure the shifting contours of abstraction. His transcendent take on still life painting Flower Face Dummy (2018) forms a meeting place between his airbrush sky gradient Blue Pink Sky (2019) and the spectral genesis of character embodied by the parodic statue Bronze Dummy (2019).
AGAINST THE WALL fleshes out the apparent rules of architectural space, capturing the veiled blueprints of emotion and intimacy in a physical environment. Informed by the classic idea of a painting as a window, the exhibited works present scenery both quotidian and sublime with the mutability of a stage set. Miller’s vivid inversion of colour relishing the flatness of pure pigment, Hachtmann’s canvases stacked tall like a teasing, unreadable sketchbook, and Camerno’s human-scale ‘dummy’, brought to its knees like a lovesick anti-hero, are composed with a conscious air of artifice. In AGAINST THE WALL, these narrative devices are portals into emotional architecture, pushing open the room to experiences felt but otherwise unseen.
Text by Brit Seaton
Made possible with support by adidas Originals and Warsteiner
ARTISTS BIOGRAPHIES
TOMMY CAMERNO
Tommy Camerno (b.1992) is an artist based in London and Berlin. Tommy currently studies painting at the Royal College of Art in London and previously studied at UDK in Berlin and Chelsea College of Art in London. Tommy’s paintings, installations and other works reflect the way in which objects and architectural space can be understood as governing psychological states. The work questions how our felt experiences are affected and structurally contained. Recent exhibitions include WIP show, RCA, London (2020), Bad Romance, Gusglasshalle,
Berlin (2019), Invisible Realness, PS120, Berlin (2019), The Outside Wall, UDK, Berlin (2019), and recent performances at Reitvelt Academy, Amsterdam (2018) and Plus Dede, Berlin (2018).
LEXIA HACHTMANN
Lexia Hachtmann (b. in Berlin 1993) is a Berlin-based artist. After completing her Art and Design Foundation Degree in Brighton, England in 2013 she started studying Fine Art Painting in Berlin. She is currently completing her Masters Degree at the University of the Arts Berlin in the class of Mark Lammert. Her work quotes subjective memoirs that she reworks into new narratives placed within stage-like contemporary settings. She informs her work with references to historical as well as architectural perspectives and is interested in the reassembling of painting and installation.
NAVOT MILLER
Navot Miller (b.1991) is currently based in Berlin, Germany. Throughout his life, Miller has always been fascinated by visuals and sound as a way of expressing ideas and exploring sexuality, religion and desire. Using the practice of opposite and contrasting colors as a form of painting and the aesthetic of short videos, Miller creates montages of scenes into both paper and videos while juxtaposing tragedy and positivity. He is a recipient of Ernst Ludwig
Ehrlich Scholarship, studies at the University of Arts Berlin and Weissensee Academy of Arts since 2017 and established himself as a permanent member of the art community KuLe, where he lives collectively with 17 other artists. Recent exhibitions include Juden Rein, Werkstattgalerie, Berlin, Germany (2019), True lies for singled freedom, Art Zagreb, Zagreb, Coratia (2019) and Post Paris Ass, curated by M.I/mi1glissé, Paris Ass Book Fair, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018).
Tommy Camerno
Lexia Hachtmann
Navot Miller