Calm is required but not wholly attainable. You like to window shop a few blocks down from your house, but there’s a feeling on the street where you once saw that fake paper bill stuck between the slats of a sewage drain. Is worry a tremor in the pits of our trunks—can you see the rings when our trees are chopped down? Small quakes can grow larger and become restless and erratic. Is that something like yearning– or is that fatigue? Safety waits in the space between two close cuts. Does it tickle when you brush up against violence? 

Exgirlfriend warmly welcomes you to join us for the opening reception of Valume, works by Margrit Barner, Alexander Norton, and Mark Walker– curated by Exgirlfriend. This is the eighth exhibition of the 2019/2020 cycle, and it consists of works that uncover truths about various forms and degrees of violence as well as related themes, such as detachment, fear, trauma, safety, and damage. Valume is a phonetic play on the prescription drug Valium, aka Diazepam, which is administered or taken to produce a calming effect in the user, and a visual play on the word “value”, as value is given and taken away to all elements in our lives, resulting in its forms of violence. The exhibition focuses on violence as a persistent force, not always physical or explosive, but consistently destructive– provoking, at the very least, a nausea-inducing feeling of unease. 

Margrit Barner (b. 1987, DE) is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, video, and photography. She received her Master’s in Architecture from TU Berlin under Professor Donatella Fioretti and worked as project leader for Duncan McCauley. She has designed exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. She currently lives and works in Berlin.

Alexander Norton (b. 1990, UK) graduated from the University of Wales, Newport with a BA (hons) in Documentary Photography in 2012. She established Künstler, Künstlerin in 2018 and curates events, exhibitions, and projects. Her work uses various media that apply to existential living observations. She has worked with Kreuzberg Pavilion, Project Space Festival Berlin, FU Review, Paper Journal, Splash and Grab Magazine, Festival of Future Nows, and YET Magazine. She lives and works in Berlin.

Mark Walker (b. 1988, UK) graduated from the University of the Arts in London with his BA in Painting and the Staedelschule in Sculpture. He was part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries, A Foundation in Liverpool, and ICA in London. The works for this exhibition are from the series 'nnausea', sculptures inspired by a makeshift street weapon made from blades and coins meant for permanently scarring flesh, and continue to deal with perpetuation using iodine. This provides the viewer with a sensual, retinal, and mental experience where a corporeality is established symbolically as well as sensitively with the (literal) chemistry of the objects. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

Text by Exgirlfriend