Paradise Libraries: Episode 2

16 June – end of July 2020

Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa | Bradley Davies | Isabella Fürnkäs | Oliver Husain | Shila Khatami | Claus Richter | Monika Stricker

Taking its cue from the concept and the history of the Archive, Paradise Libraries is a project that will develop over two episodes, including both new bodies of work as well as pieces from the gallery’s archives. Following Episode 1 the second part of Paradise Libraries will be hosted throughout the exhibition spaces from June 16 to July 6, 2020. The episodes will attempt to reconfigure the gallery’s program as it has been shaped throughout the last 10 years and will incorporate works by all represented artists. The title of the project relates to a quote by Jorge Luis Borges that reads as follows: “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library”. The project will not fall into a fixed curated frame of reference, but will instead attempt to reimage the gallery’s program as a whole from the inside, focusing on the artist’s own perspective and point of view. The following note reads as an open letter with no curatorial intention by an anonymous culture worker and shall therefore remain unsigned.

The friend waiting in the first room may strike as scary at first. Once his song is heard the truth about his story, his desperate love affair with Marcel Proust, and his intentions come out (Thank you for being a friend, Your heart is true, you’re a pal and a confidant, I’m not ashamed to say, I hope it always will stay this way, My hat is off, won’t you stand up and take a bow, And if you threw a party, Invited everyone you knew, Well, you would see the biggest gift would be from me). Moving forward past his well-guarded gate a body lays inruins, with the writing on the wall spilling all over the room and the self-made icons of our future fighting one out for the chance of winning one of the world’s finest balloons. An aluminum mirror on the corner makes sure to reflect everyone and everything, catching on his vision the histories of his medium. The building’s walls, notoriously difficult to work with, crack open and the tentacled queer monsters break free. On the last room of the library, hidden well behind a broken white wall, the male extraterrestrials from the distant year 2010 challenge their viewership to a violent rematch.

The library is closed.