January 14-February 23, 2018 

Opening Sunday Jan 14th, from 5-8 PM
 
CENTRAL FINE presents Inside the Brick by Christoph Westermeier. This is his first solo exhibition at CENTRAL FINE and his second presentation in Miami Beach, after a one-night performance at Between Arrival & Departure, Miami Beach in 2017.

The works at CENTRAL FINE bring to mind a mise en abyme, reflecting images within images, at once hermetic and generic, defined by cuts and filters; as if entering the multiple structures of a nightmare, where perception swallows itself, blind and deaf, full of id.

This is a dangerous dream and Westermeier walks and walls us through it, signaling the abyss of the brick, its depth, and our tendency to self-exile and isolation. Perhaps the liquidity of the brick (like the liquidity of the word, or the eye) solidifies blinding masks that indicate simultaneous temporalities and shape-shifting facades.

Pockets, legs, pillows, doors, green malachite, the brick on a maligned intimacy, and the immersion into what sketches power and its structures; are all called upon in a poetic move, carving out a tiny hole?

–Diego Singh 

‘Inside the brick’ stands for a discussion between a flâneur and objects in a Potemkin village. The flâneur is detached from time and space and walks secluded on a horizontal line. He is in close contact with Siegfried Kracauer, W. G. Sebald and Daphne du Maurier. His points of reference are the objects he encounters, which he sees as accomplices on his tours. In these objects, the flâneur finds friends who help him to enter society: an ashtray is his ticket to a late roman banquet as well as his constant companion on cruising tours through Vatican city or a handy helper in Napoleon III second empire.

Power structures are the counterparts the flâneur has to deal with. While his true friend Jean Des Esseintes (“À rebours”, Joris-Karl Huysmans) turned away from reality, the flâneur made a deal with power structures: realizing that rational organs experience his dialogue with objects only as a monologue he moved on to a Potemkin village. In this illusory world the insides of bricks have the same narrative power as paintings by Niele Toroni. While power structures keep vertical control of this construction, the flâneur remains on his horizontal tour, talking to paper, walking through a propaganda show by el Lissitzky and listening to Shostakovich music.

–Christoph Westermeier, Dusseldorf, 2017-2018. 

Christoph Westermeier (b. 1984, Cologne) studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf / Academy of Fine Arts 2004- 2010 in Dusseldorf (2004–2008 with Prof. Thomas Ruff and Benjamin Katz/Albrecht Fuchs; 2008–2010 with Prof. Rita McBride and Prof. Christopher Williams, master student of Prof. Christopher Williams in 2009) and attended De Ateliers in Amsterdam from 2011 until 2013. His awards and grants include Moscow residency, Multimedia Art Museum Moscow (2016); Schloss Ringenberg residency (2015); Istanbul residency, Kunststiftung NRW (2014); Förderpreis NRW (2013); Working grant Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn (2013); dHCS Scholarship, Kunstverein Dusseldorf (2011); Peter-Mertes-Scholarship, Kunstverein Bonn (2010); Meisterschüler of Christopher Williams (2009).

Westermeier has presented solo exhibitions at the Kunstverein Bonn, Bonn; the Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf ; Thebaïs, Cologne; Between Arrival & Departure, Miami Beach; Kunststiftung NRW, Istanbul; Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam; Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf, among others. He has participated in group exhibitions and performances at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Amsterdam; the Kunstverein Düsseldorf, with E. Hermann, A. Pöhlmann, F. Rohden Düsseldorf; Villa Romana, Florence; and the Julia Stoschek Collection in Düsseldorf, among others.