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Apr 23–May 22, 2015
Galerie Esther Donatz, Munich
01111010 01100101 01110010 01101111 01100111 01110010 01100001 01110110 01101001 01110100 01111001 — binary for zerogravity — is a solo exhibition by Nadja Verena Marcin at Esther Donatz Gallery in Munich as part of the city wide festival Kino der Kunst. The exhibition explores female archetypes — the fighter, the ruler, and the wanderer — and expands them into broader reflections on the human condition. Set against ongoing debates around gender, representation, and the body, Marcin’s practice functions as a laboratory where philosophy, science, and pop-cultural myth converge to question how identity, power, and emotion are performed in contemporary life.
Evoking the surreal aesthetics of 1970s science fiction, the videos, performances, and photographs in Marcin’s first solo show in Munich become modern archetypes of human existence — oscillating between weightlessness and gravity, power and vulnerability, fantasy and critique. In Zero Gravity (2013), the artist experiences real physical weightlessness aboard a 1979 Rockwell Commander while reciting Nietzsche’s The Madman from The Gay Science (1882): “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” Suspended between heavenly elation and existential descent, the work situates the body in a metaphysical space between life and death, art and science, the human and the divine.
In Triple F (2013), a science-fiction–inflected video inspired by Logan’s Run (1976), three female monarchs — coded in blue, yellow, and red — wage war across a castle garden, a 1970s shopping mall, and a modernized brewery. The film amplifies desire, repression, and performance-driven social mechanisms to satirize authority and the visibility of powerful women. Marcin’s new photographic series Cono Sur (2015), created in Bolivia and exhibited in Germany for the first time, continues her reflection on women and interpersonal relations. Jedi (2015) stages woman as a fighter in the Salar de Uyuni, Bride (2015) reimagines marriage as an economic and ritual passage “from fertility to a state of withering,” and Colonialist (2015), shot in the Amboró jungle, depicts the artist and her partner as tribal leaders defending their territory — a critical meditation on Western ideologies of partnership, power, and otherness.
Curated by Jürgen Dehm, 01111010 01100101 01110010 01101111 01100111 01110010 01100001 01110110 01101001 01110100 01111001 centers on Nadja Verena Marcin’s interdisciplinary practice, which merges performance, video, and photography to interrogate the structures shaping gender and social behavior. Marcin’s works have been exhibited internationally in Seoul, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Basel, New York, and Los Angeles, and presented in programs at institutions such as ICA Philadelphia, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), and ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe).
INSTITUTION
Galerie Esther Donatz
Amalienstraße 45 (Mgb.)
80799 München – Germany
LINK TO EXHIBITION
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CURATOR
Jürgen Dehm
ARTISTS
Nadja Verena Marcin
CATALOG
Kino der Kunst Programmheft, Munich: EIKON Süd GmbH, 2015.
PRESS
“Das Münchner Wochenende – Wenn die Musen durchmachen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, 8 May 2015.
PRESS
“Nadja Verena Marcin | Do. 23.04., Galerie Esther Donatz, 18:00,” AUFKUNST, Munich, 21 Apr 2015.
“Surreale Schwerelosigkeit: Nadja Verena Marcin,” In München – Das Stadtmagazin, Munich, Apr 2015.
SPONSORS
The work Zero Gravity was made possible with the support of Aurora Aerospace, Tampa, and WARP Contemporary Art Platform, Sint Niklaas. Triple F was funded by Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Düsseldorf. Bride, Jedi, and Colonialist were supported by SCHRUPP Architecture and KIOSKO Galeria, Santa Cruz.