Berlin | ArtRegion: Berlin, Kreuzberg

Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler

Alexander Carver: Potent Stem

19. Juni – 21. August 2021

The works presented in the exhibition expand upon Carver’s accumulating ecology of images, including patent documents, medieval wood cuts, depictions of bodily injury, as well as advanced bio-medical research. Utilized as raw material, these references are compressed into a painterly pictorial space through techniques of frottage and stenciling achieved by machine, hand and brush. In Potent Stem, Carver introduces processes of cross-species hybridization through cellular transplantation. A procedure called decellularization employs spinach and parsley leaves as scaffolding for human stem cells, so that they may ultimately become a piece of your damaged heart someday.

Two separate and contrasting spaces within the exhibition demarcate distinct modes of painting. In a conventionally white space, a lush and decorative botanical theme persists threaded with references to semio-capitalist reproduction in the form of bio-medical patents for advanced grafting procedures and tools, and diagrammatic marginalia that refer to the implicit architectural possibilities of such research when scaled. Conversely, a black room contains paintings consumed with references to corporal punishment and bizarre medieval experiments born out of the necessity of medical intervention due to the systematization of amputation and disfigurement under pre-modern legal systems.