By Peter Doyle Coogan
Kafka’s Gregor Samsa may wake one day as a big insect, but he instantly knows himself. Even as a bug, he knows his own singular self.
“When Kim² woke up that morning,” a mysterious artist’s statement began for a recent gallery opening in Venice Beach (California, U.S.A.), “they didn’t know where they were and who they were. Was it a dream, or was it real?”
Where’s Kim², ha!
The real question: what’s “Kim²”?
Hardly a familiar name, like, for a person, or what?
This Kim² can remain a mystery, a teaser, for a sec.
But the where’s easy. So’s the when.
This gallery art show takes place now in Venice, a few doors northeast of Abbot Kinney Boulevard, at EC3 Studio, 517 Victoria Ave., also known as Central Server Works Venice. The show appears as a co-production by CSW curator Joshua Oduga and Yann Pereau of Paris and his roving gallery, Here Is Elsewhere.
This show also lives online (now and forever), in several places, for example,
<https://www.facebook.com/
<https://www.facebook.com/
Note the hashtag: #SCHOEN_STADT
Its images, posters, and sculptural works went on display on a recent sunny Sunday, that last weekend before Election Day, and will remain on view right through Thanksgiving, the end of November, and into early December. Email to schedule a viewing, “By appointment: YannPerreau@gmail.com”
So, back to the mystery:
Who’s this “Kim²” person?
And what’s she/they doing in Venice?
Our first clue about this Kim² came as walk-in visitors to the Sunday show: the American contemporary artists Kim Schoen and Kim Schoenstadt attended the opening and gave an artists talk, too.
On that recent sunny Sunday, they arrived on time, but not as themselves.
Instead, they served as witnesses (heralds?) to a new artist, whom they contend they had conjured up from themselves, and whose works lined the spare walls of the cozy/stark gallery space, which bills itself as an “indoor-outdoor environment that invites artists to explore new and immersive ways to present their work in a flexible, non-white box setting.”
They mingled, Kim Schoen and Kim Schoenstadt, and mixed themselves, amid the growing hubbub of fresh-faced youths, grizzled survivors, kissy-cheek friends, dap-smacking pals, white-wine mongers, some just-soda-for-me sober types, a solo Covid-masquer (who’s the endangered species now?), but bonhomie galore. Lots of laughs, but a lingering quiet curiosity.
They had made the scene, yet only after creating a neo persona, not a homunculus, nor a baby, but a fully adult, active, and accomplished artist, whom they dubbed, variously, as “Schoen/Stadt,” or as “Kims Schoen/Stadt.”
A second clue came in a photo, actually a couple of photos framed together on the wall, as “Both Both Neither Neither,” 2024:
Photo courtesy of Here is Elsewhere Gallery and Central Server Works]
She looks… familiar, so lifelike, so plausible, just like a real-live artist.
A photo can count as “proof of life,” for purposes of hostage negotiations; why not here? So, does this mean Schoen/Stadt has come to life?
This photo features two views of the neo artist, Kims Schoen/Stadt, depicted in computer-generated imagery, crafted by (I think) Kim², from passport photos of the still-living artists Kim Schoen and Kim Schoenstadt.
Their names start alike and sound alike and these two even look alike, too. Which one’s which? Part of the mystery.
But if Kim Schoen and Kim Schoenstadt stood in the gallery, beside the works of Kims Schoen/Stadt, their neo-artist protégée, then who’s this “Kim²” and what’s she/they like at home?
You could ask Kim Schoen and Kim Schoenstadt, but good luck.
They sat for a question and answer session, led by Yann Pereau in perfectly fluent and wildly French-accented English.
But they managed to deepen every mystery, even while charming their audience with engaging laughs and light-hearted references to further art tricksters. Tricksters such as the late Arne Ekstroma, a heroic WWII army “deceiver,” whose memorial plaque adorns the garden wall outside. As director of the Cordier & Ekstrom art gallery in Manhattan for 35 years, Arne Ekstroma showed Duchamp, but as the gallerist Yann Pereau explained, Ekstroma had served as “a liaison officer specializing in strategic deception during the war.”
Kim2 also namechecked another trickster, Tim/Werner Haffenberger. “He was a character,” one of them said. “Tim was a character trying on other characters.”
The other one mentioned Eileen Gray, the Anglo-Irish architect and designer, who faced forced obscurity as a female artist in pre-war France, where her masterpiece, the seaside villa “E-1027,” became conflated with Le Corbusier when he, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, painted it with his murals, against her expressed design calling for no decor. Eileen Gray forged a persona, too, using the man’s name, “Jean Désert,” as her public face.
Forging personas to advance an artist and their creations sounds very modern, contemporary, and even 21st Century.
See for yourself.
SCHOEN/STADT, co-curated by Yann Perreau of Here is Elsewhere and Joshua Oduga of Central Server Works. November 3 – December 14, 2024.
At EC3 Studio, 517 Victoria Ave., Venice, CA.
Viewing by appointment: YannPerreau@gmail.com
Bonus Quiz: Who’s who at Schoen/Stadt?
Q. Y/N, does this count as a group show for Kim², et al? Or a solo show for the brand-new third artist Kims Schoen/Stadt?
A.
Q. Proceeds split how? 50/50 between Kim Schoen and Kim Schoenstadt? Or 33.33% percent each for those two, Kim², and the new third artist Kims Schoen/Stadt?
A.
Q. If Germans call one’s double a “Doppelgänger,” what may each Kim² call her third-party creation, a “Hälftegänger”? Or a “Drittelgänger”?
A.
Q. Who’s this “Kim²” person? And what’s She/They doing in Venice?
A.
;;;
Biographical sites and specifics on some of these artists:
Kim Schoen, born in Princeton; lives in Berlin.
KimSchoen.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Linkedin.com/in/kim-schoen-
Kim Schoenstadt, born in Chicago; lives in L.A.
KimSchoenstadt.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Linkedin.com/in/kim-
Χα-χα
I’m thoroughly intrigued, and a bit confused (but in a good way). I love a review that leaves me slightly off-kilter, as I hope the show does.