Felix Gmelin
Felix Gmelin, born in Heidelberg in the early 60s, lives and works in Sarajevo and Stockholm. He uses media including painting, performance and video as means of investigating political imagery and language, utopia and dogmatism, while comparing contemporary political activism with that of times past. His method of questioning the aestheticisation of politics through historical comparison discusses how radical gestures have now turned into fashion, and whether art can be useful to present-day society. His work is based on our shared memory, and uses autobiographical family stories and private documentary material to demonstrate how every story overlies another.
Solo exhibitions: 2014 Raw material, Vilma Gold, London. 2013 Nations are stranger than People, Charlama Depot, Center Skenderija, Sarajevo (BIH). Utiphobia, Krognoshuset, Lund (SE). 2012 T is for Toe, Nordenhake, Stockholm. 2011 Manifesto, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam. Baby (revolution) comeback, Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina, Kosovo.
Group exhibitions: 2014 Progress and Hygiene, Zach?ta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. Workers United, Kasa Gallery, Istanbul. Dernières nouvelles de l’Éther / Breaking News from the Ether, La Panacée, Montpellier (FR). In Search of the Industrial Culture, EB NCCA, Ural National Center for Contemporary Art, Ekaterinburg (RU). We Fragment, Collect and Narrate, Kunstmuseum Thun (CH). 2013 Version Control, Arnolfini, Bristol (GB). 2012 The Revolution must be made little by little, Galeria Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo (BR). 2007 History will repeat Itself – strategies of re-enactment in contemporary art, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Hartware MedienKunst-Verein, Dortmund (DE). 52nd Venice Biennale. 2006 Of mice and men, 4th Berlin Biennial.
Publications
Sinziana Ravini, “Peeping Tom”, in: Paletten, no. 294, 4:2013.
Kerry Brougher, Russell Ferguson, Dario Gamboni, Damage Control: Art and Destruction since 1950, exh. cat. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, Prestel, New York 2013.
Daniel Birnbaum, “We live in different times”, in: Strangers: Between Europe and Asia, VII Shiryaevo Biennale of Contemporary Art (RU), exh. cat., Issuu.com 2012.