From 14 March until 24 May 2015 me Collectors Room Berlin presents ‘A Book of Burning
Matches: Collecting Installation Art Documents’. The exhibition examines the importance
of documentation in Installation Art and presents the collection of documents assembled
by London based-curators Nicolas de Oliveira (German/Portuguese) und Nicola Oxley
(British) spanning three decades.
The material displayed takes the form of analogue and digital photographs, videos, soundrecordings,
texts, models and objects. The two curators restage the historical material,
proposing a choreographed movement through the archive. The material displayed therefore
does not seek to replace past installations and performances nor is it presented as
immutable historical documentation.
In addition to installation documents by artists such as Mischa Kuball (Germany), Phyllida
Barlow (Britain), Andrea Büttner (Germany) and Lucia Nogueira (Brazil), which were shown
in the gallery spaces of the two curators and in independent exhibitions in Britain, Europe
and America, the exhibition also features a number of newly made interventions by artists
already present in the archive, including Hans Op de Beeck (Belgium), Stefan Brüggemann
(Mexico) , David Price, Barnaby Hosking and David Allen (all British).
The exhibition is accompanied by a sound design of the American media curator Alejandro
Ball.
A publication accompanies the exhibition ‘A Book of Burning Matches: Collecting
Installation Art Documents’.
