Helen Martin - Take A Stick and Make It Sharp - Johann Köning - Berlin

through June 4, 2011

There’s a medieval thriftiness to the idea that two sharpened sticks dragged over one another could make fire. That something as quiet and dumb as a small section of tree - via impulsive chop and sweat and luck – carries a potential blaze. But there is also a fiddling stupidity in the instruction, no manual or download to offer suggestion of how this blind alchemy could ever be as simple as a match. And there is also the question of what’s missing, of the glaze of actions before and after the taking and the sharpening. So in the title, the exhibition suggests a command, an optimism, but also the image of hapless engineer moving via ancient cartoon process.

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