NADA New York 2023
Anne de Vries, Julian Jakob Kneer

Anne de Vries: DAY CARE DRILL

Excretion is automatic, but how we do it is not. Parents are advised to teach their children how to use a toilet when they’re around 18-24 months, and diapers are substituted for toddler toilets. Scaled down for smaller limbs, they resemble the real thing but without the architectonic devices — doors, walls, dividers — that define their referent. For what is considered the most intimate of architectural spaces, privacy is earned not given. Like with most training techniques, these are performative objects, like stage sets, upon which the digestive rites of adulthood are mimed under the watchful gaze of parents.

Excerpt from the text by Nicholas Korody

Julian-Jakob Kneer: BASTARDS

Monochrome printed silver mirrors are framed in galvanised aluminum and hung in a simple grid. Each one features a layered collage of three seemingly random movie titles.

Under the polished surfaces, the works prove a murky basin of pop culture references that is almost too laden with association to wade through at ease. Through crossbreeding ready-made opposing narratives, Kneer’s BASTARDS riff on themes of morality and the narcissistic self. In the reflection of the shimmering muck, stars are born, identities are lost, witches are burned by barbies, and ecstasy seamlessly blends into terror.

Sifting contemporary zeitgeist artifacts through the lens of ancient lore, and inexorably returning to the foundational principles of human psychology, Kneer’s work digs up the foundations of supposed socio-cultural binaries and confronts our conceptions of right / wrong, beautiful / ugly, low / high culture. The artist breaks them down into their constituent parts, and releases them for recasting in a value-free space.

Nele Jackson