Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci have collaborated as an artist duo since 1995. They attracted attention through actions in which they respond with simple gestures to the physical characteristic of materials. The materials involved are simple office supplies and work material: Cool Balducci aligned, for example, the position of a DinA4 sheet of paper in keeping with the incidence angle of sunlight, or they stroked fingers over a stretched tape to produce the soft buzzing sound of an insect. The execution is concentrated and almost compulsively decelerated. By integrating a poetic moment, they break with the functional attributions of the respective object: the outside world and nature enter into the closed space of the economics and productivity.
“Can Carry No Weight” describes the limits of a load-bearing capacity. Whether it is that of an individual or that of an object remains ambiguous. What is certain is that a maximum capacity has been reached and the respective system no longer cannot or does not want to permit more. In a kind of artificial lab environment, objects are disseminated across the exhibition whose erstwhile function was to withstand weights: metallic floor tiles, dismantled office desks or a series of tinted car windows of SUVs. Detached from their respective production chains, the objects appear dysfunctional and residual, expectant and static. In this scenario of a disused world, Marie Cool Fabio Balducci uses the objects to launch new actions, which can be seen both live and during the exhibition as video documentation.
“Can Carry No Weight” reads like a sign of fatigue, a failure, an attitude of refusal, perhaps even as a warning to a system that is on the brink of collapse because of its waste of resources: Here, between abstraction and unproductivity, between resistance and the specification to do nothing, is where according to Marie Cool Fabio Balducci the objects, actions and settings abide in the dubious darkness of their classification, goals, functions and standards.
Marie Cool was born in 1961 in Valenciennes in France, Fabio Balducci in 1964 in Ostra (Ancona, Italy). They live and work in Paris and Pergola (Marche, Italy). It is the first solo exhibition of the artist couple in Germany.
Curated by
Regina Barunke
Publication
Marie Cool Fabio Balducci. Can Carry No Weight (exh. booklet, ed. R. Barunke, GAK, 2019)
Annual edition
Marie Cool Fabio Balducci: Untitled, photocopy machine, atlas, paper handkerchief, 2018
Events
Fri 06.09.19, 7–10pm
Opening
Introduction by Regina Barunke
Keynote by Adam Szymczyk, and
Marie Cool Fabio Balducci:
Random daily activations
Sat 07.09.19, 11am–6pm
Marie Cool Fabio Balducci: Random daily activations
Sat, 16.11.19, 11am–6pm
Marie Cool Fabio Balducci: Random daily activations
Sun, 17.11.19, 11am–6pm
Guided tour with Regina Barunke, and Marie Cool Fabio Balducci: Random daily activations
Sun, 8.12.19, 11am
Guided tour with Sarah Maria Kaiser
Support
Senator of Culture of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, Bureau des arts plastiques of the Institut français and the French Ministry of Culture, Q-International. La Quadriennale di Roma, Beate + Hartmut Schaefers Foundation, Clean Run Service Team, Bremen