ILJA KARILAMPI
26.09.11 - 05.11.11
opening: 24.09.11 | 7 pm

Club Midnight is glad to present the first solo show of Ilja Karilampi.
The gallery space is turned into a large installation made of a series of different elements. The project is an extension of a private member scenario created by the artist in his studio space on Governors Island, New York City, when Ilja Karilampi was researching the underground music scene and sculptural destruction in NYC in the last spring and summer.

The artist brought some of the material to Berlin and together with a series of new unique works he turned the installation into the next version, the 2.0. In the exhibition space, wooden walls and a hand stamped brick pattern aligns the corner of the room - creating a separate environment where 5 years of collected video works are shown on a TV monitor. This space is decorated with 4Loko cans, filled with concrete; the energy drink that contains both caffeine and 12% alcohol is now getting banned in New York. In front of this installation, some posters of a window covered with purple foil, superimposed on top of a generic brick pattern, are shown in two stands.

In the middle of the space there is a large sculpture consisting of the containers of DVD players. The sculpture is a quote from the recent video h00dumentary that recalls a still from the 90´s French movie La Haine. In a sequence of this movie we see an apartment of a person who sells stolen goods in the suburb, packed with expensive technical equipment; The sculpture of boxes is a real citation from that film: an insignificant detail in the scenario of the movie, but with great potential for making a physical work.
Behind the sculpture is placed a slide projection of shop and street signs shot along the Karl-Marx-Strasse in Neukölln from 2010. The photos has originally been shot on a digital camera, then transformed into slides by photographing the screen of an IBook with a Minolta camera. On the wall there is a copy of a summer issue of the music magazine FADER laminated in plastic, showing the artists VYBZ/SOULJA. In the office area there are drawings and sketches with preparations for earlier known works.

The Artist has been using the gallery as a studio, or a site to manufacture works, and in addition to that Ilja Karilampi has been developing the design identity for Club Midnight.
The name of the gallery is inspired by a poetry of Charles Simic, a Serbian American author of magic realism. The gallery space is based in Kürfurstenstrasse 35, with an international program focus on the expanding possibility of performance action into different media.

Ilja Karilampi *1983, Göteborg, Sweden. Lives and works in New York and Berlin. Ilja studied at Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Städelschule, Frankfurt, with prof. Tobias Rehberger (2005-2010). Solo exhibitions: h00dumentary, On-Blocks, Sandy Brown, Berlin; H00dumentary, 2 person solo show, Centrum Beeldende Kunst Zuidoost, Bijlmer, Amsterdam; Vienna Art Fair, solo presentation with Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz, Vienna (2011); White Magic Nemo Web, OTHER, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt; The Chief Architect of Gangsta Rap, Black Box, Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2009); Group exhibitions: Evil Freaks II, NADA Hudson, Hudson, New York; Where language stops, Wilkinson Gallery, London; Amerika, América, Amerique, Cleopatra ?s Berlin, Berlin; based in Berlin, Kunst-Werke & Monbijoupark, Berlin; Appendix Lecture Series #1, Columbia University, New York; The Smart Frridge, Chilly Forecast for Internet Fridge, Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz; (2010). Recently he did studio residencies at Building 110, Governors Island, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, and BijlmAIR, CBK Zuidoost & SMBA, Amsterdam (2011)