CORROSIVE CALENDER 2011 released on friday 17th dec.

IT's upcoming!!!! XLAB Corrosive Calender 2011 featuring inedite works by: VINCENZO GROSSO, MARCELLO GUNGUI, PAOLA VERDE, AGHIASOPHIE, DISCORDANT, DARKAM.
Dont' miss it, it's printed in a very LIMITED edition of 25 copies signed and numbered!

* Support XLAB *
HAPPY NEW YEAR

order a copy: info at xlaboratory.org
15 euro + shipping

NO MAN's LAND: photographies by GREGOIRE CACHEMAILLE

OPENING: FRIDAY 17th DECEMBER from 6pm

photographies by GREGOIRE CACHEMAILLE

exhibition running until 20.01.11

during the opening a selection of electronic live music by WATER WAVES (Fr) + new cd release!

***Gluhwein + cocktails***





No Man's land has the silhouette of slim chimneys tapering into the sky, her eyes are as intence as the black windows staring at us, her surface is chipped and cracked skin, her hair is rusty and hazed, her soul is as dark as the dust dancing at our passage.
Yet she is so sexy, charming and mysterious. Wrapped into ghost silence slums, abandoned factories, derelict buildings and barren lands, she traps us into another dimension, away from traditional sense of time.
She welcomes us into wounded and forgotten lands, full of history and stories to be told, making us wondering on what 's happened in those places. Like a step back in a Time that once was so glorious and productive, with the noise of gears and machinery in operation. Now you can feel just a far away feedback, but still containing a mysterious force within itself, like a muffled voice that wants to be heard.
According to the manifesto of modern society, what is now useless, ugly, dilapidated must be sacrificed to the new, at all costs, what is private must be locked and for what concerns abandoned place the access is forbidden.
The explorer perfectly knows that he has to break down these limitations, to rediscover and reclaim the sites, to venture into their belly leaving untouched and unspoiled their soul: taking only photographs and leaving nothing but footprints. Beeing there, yet walking invisible.
After his passage remains only the dust between shadowplays, the fading haze of a chimney, the rust dripping from the walls, the history that is forgotten, the city that is transformed.
(Paola Verde)

http://www.gregoirec.com


read the interview

MOLOTOV: a photo exhibition by AGHIASOPHIE

On saturday 11.12.2010 from 6pm
opening: MOLOTOV: a photo exhibition by AGHIASOPHIE

TACHELES BERLIN BOX 4th floor
Oranienburgerstr. 54-56 Berlin Mitte

Cittadine cittadini
Pargoli enfants teen-agers babies
This is the program, è senza prezzo:
L'antico è favolistico folklore grezzo
Il moderno è iniziato e finito
Voilà l'età del mezzo
liberodemocraticoprogresso


Il diario di un viaggio, attraverso le citta' e le sue genti, un reportage di vita urbana di inizio millennio, a cavallo delle periferie e delle fabbriche dismesse, nei volti sporchi e fieri dei personaggi, nei crocevia di palazzi dove si intrecciano storie e tramandano racconti .
Una storia sussurrata attraverso trasparenze, immagini effime come ricordi, figure in controluce danzanti, silhouettes di edifici silenti.
Ma anche forte come una molotov che esplode, come una storia senza censura, come la vita raccontata senza filtro.
Un viaggio nell' underground dai forti bianco e neri e dagli accentuati contrasti. Ma con un tocco di fiabesco.
La giovane fotografa italiana, nata a Lecco nel 1985, dopo essersi laureata alla NABA a Milano, si e' trasferita a Berlino dove collabora con diversi artisti e con la galleria XLAB Corrosive Art Farm.

www.aghiasophie.it


The diary of a journey through the city and its people, a reportage of urban life in the new millennium, among suburbs and abandoned factories, trough the dirty and proud faces of the characters, at the crossroads of buildings where lives intertwine and stories pass down.
A whispered story by means of transparent, ephemeral images as memories, backlit figures dancing, silent silhouettes of buildings.
Even as strong as a Molotov cocktail exploding like a story without censorship, or a lifestyle without a filter.
A journey into underground life, with its strong black and whites and accentuated contrast. But always with a touch of romance.
The young Italian photographer, born in Lecco in 1985, after graduating at NABA New Academy of Beauty Art in Milan, moved to Berlin where she lives and collaborates with various artists and with the artgallery XLAB Corrosive Art Farm.

XLAB 2011 PRESENTS:

28.01.2011
MARS solo show (Nuoro, Berlin)


04.03.2011
BLO (Paris) + AMIGO (Bruxelles) double show


08.04.2011
STEF LENK (Toronto, Canada) solo show

salon de refuses report

featuring:
aghiasophie (photos)
discordant (photos)
flint (wallpainting, sketches)
darkam (wallpainting, paintings)

XLAB online catalogue

check this video, presenting the online catalogue of 1 year XLAB!
music by paolo
video by aghiasopie
graphic by paolaverde

XLAB - Salon des Refusés event

If you hang around Kreuzberg during Stroke's hot week, come to visit our atelier in Skaltzer Str. 67 (U1 Schlesisches Tor)
We will be open on thursday 7.10 and friday 8.10 from 1pm till 8pm presenting

"Salon des Refusés" : an exhibition of the youngest artists from XLAB team:
Aghiasophie (photography)
Discordant (innervision)
Darkam (paintings)
Flint (sketches)

DARKAM live painting
music selection by Grr

and ERIK KIRTON solo show, opened on September 17. and running until 17.10.10.
****

OUR LIVE PAINTINGS DURING STROKE WEEK!!

During the "hot" week of STROKE you can see a lot of great artists live painting at the fair and over some selected facades in the streets of Berlin.

We are proud to announce that two italian artists coming from XLAB-1st Year experience- have been selected to make a live painting during Stroke Fair!: Seacreative and Senso.
If you hadn't been so lucky to meet them last year at XLAB, while painting our facade wall, you will meet them next October at Stroke.








Thursday 06.10 and friday 07.10 XLAB will be also open to visitors and will offer you a live painting of a young but very skilled artist: Eugenia Monti aka DARKAM. If you hang around Kreuzberg, come to have a look!!

XLAB @ STROKE !!!!

After two succesfull editions in Munich, Stroke Urban Art Fair goes into the third round and will open its doors in Berlin and will showcase a huge collection of street art, poster art, paintings, illustrations, cut-outs, stickers and everything related to new contemporary art.

XLAB Corrosive Art Farm will be present with a selection of the best artworks, choosen from our first-year-experience exhibitions and two great guests coming from italy: Seacreative and Senso, who will make a live painting during Stroke!
Don't miss them, come to visit us at our stand, from 7 till 10 October at the Station Berlin, Luckenwalderstr. 4-6.
11:24

www.stroke03.com

www.seacreative.net

www.crazysen.it

Kunst-Pause

we have built up a small bar to drink a good italian espresso!
come to taste it :) and support xlab no profit art space!!!

ERIK KIRTON Cognitive Elapse opening 17.09

- Cognitive Elapse -
Erik Kirton solo show

opening: friday 17th september from 6pm





In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods. ... (1)

Cognitive Elapse essentially means a loss of memory, but also implies disregarding consciousness or entering a dreamlike state of mind.
Dreamrealm has always been fashinating the greatest artist of all times, involving every form of visual art and literacture: from Goya to Redon, from Shakespeare to William Blake, from H.R. Giger to Dave Mc Kean, from Freud's theories to Borges' dreams.
This 'Twilight Art" describes the focal passage in which light decreases, giving way to darkness and to the wildest imagination, inhabited by obscure creatures whose shapes blend with the surrounding deep black, revealing just details, often laden with strong symbolism.
Dream as darkness, since the fairy mythology of childhood, as The Sandman's tales sprinkling sandgrains into the eyes of children who don't want to go to sleep.Darkness reveales what daylight hides, leaving space to our deepest fear but also to our most sensitive imagination.
Night time slows down with the breath, the space expands and takes our mind to wander away, through imaginary realms where boundaries blur to horizon and a fine mist envelops our eyes.

It is the immensity, I believe. The hugeness of things below. The darkness of dreams. (2)

Those places reached by our imagination are often too interior and subjective to be described only with words, that's when images come into play, giving birth to overlapping space-time, nuances, drowsiness, and deep black backgrounds that evoke nightmares and creatures living in this
parallel and obscure world, an underworld realm that reminds us Oberon's sagas, Odin's power, the mists of Avalon

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot. ...(3)

Erik Kirton makes us travelling through a dark dream, presenting his solo show in this two series of works: Vintage Photography and Mixed Media.
The first set collects analogic photographs, sepia-toned and black -and-white prints manipulated in the darkroom, often acting directly on the negative-film with scratches or burns, ad memoriam of the passing of time and the vulnerability of materials: spectral buildings, winding statues with expressions full of pathos, a tombstone where white roses lie, to whose images i might istinctly associate as a soundtrack Love Will Tear Us Apart and all the deep concerns of Jan Curtis.
Kirton's photographic background comes from several years spent in the darkroom, experimenting and daring new techniques, and even now that the digital processing has substituted the primitive printing technology, radically changing the way we see and conceive photography, Eric Kirton brings us back to the past with an nostalgic eye on daguerreotypes and cyanotypes, arguing the importance of outdated methods of the past coexisting with modern technologies, in order to fill the artwork with deep human sense, thus allowing us to break free from the boundaries of today’s omnipresent modernization.

Restricting oneself to a single, redundant technique is the gravest mistake any artist could make. Too often, we are assaulted with imagery that is so generic, it is practically impossible to recognize the human aspect, within. Algorithmic calculations have replaced creativity, and the sub-culture has been commercialized to the point that it has become a mere caricature of its former self. What was once cutting-edge has been mass produced and sold on every television station around the globe. (4)

In series 'Mixed Media' serie, Kirton presents instead digitally manipulated works, collages of photographs, paintings and 3d sculptures, art made of sinuous biomechanical creatures with long antennas and tentacles that mate and fuse with human faces and skulls while a postmodern Icarus near a black sun raises his arms to heaven, in an attempt to redemption.

what power would hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of heaven? (5)

Time in this Nightmare-realm is endlessly marked by an old clock fixed on the 8, the symbol of the portal to the Infinite, like a Moebius strip, the Ethernal succession between dream and waking, until the merge of these into an eternal season of mists, typical of dreams.

(Paola Verde)

Notes:
1 "Ex Oblivione" by H. P. Lovecraft, 1920
2 "Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders" by Neil Gaiman, William Morrow, 2006
3 SANDMAN #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Neil Gaiman, 1990
4 Erik Kirton, interview 2010
5 SANDMAN "A Hope In Hell" by Neil Gaiman, 1988



During the opening night short movie projections:
" The Fallacy of Truth" 06'48" music: The Fallacy of Truth from the album "Deus ex Machina"
" Random Structures" 14'20" music: Erik Kirton video: Melle von der Nebel
" Eidola'" 06'35" video: Giuseppe Boccassini music: Fabio Orsi



BIOGRAPHY

Erik Kirton was born in Florida, then in the 80's he moved to Europe and he is currently living in Würzburg, Germany.
Since 1989, he has been exhibiting in the United States and throughout Europe.
His last exhibition took place in Poznam (Poland) in september 2010.
Upcoming shows, in 2011, will include video and music collaborations with Maya (a video artist, based in Aix-en_Provence,
France), and will be performed live in Nice, Paris, Berlin, and Leipzig.


www.myspace.com/cyaninedie
www.facebook.com/erik.kirton
www.abnormals.org (only for Abnormals members)

1 year of XLAB: CORROSIVE EXHIBITION

To celebrate one year of XLAB, a great collective exhibition, opened on 17.07 and running until 15 September, featuring Giacomo Spazio, Seacreative, Senso, Grim, Alias, BlackMaui, Discordant, AghiaSophie, Vins BCX, Paul Zone, Mork, Tilf, Tenia, Flint, Awer, Poiss, Welcometomars, Paola Verde.

september 2010 - VINS BCX show extended until 15th september!

VINS bcx exhibition extended until 15th september! don't miss it

happy birthday Xlab! we thank all of you!

To celebrate our first anniversary, we had a long weekend full of guests coming from Italy and Berlin, 3days of live painting, live set music, performances,theater, installations and exhibited artworks.







WE REALLY THANK all the artists, collaborators, performers, musicians, friends, supporters, neighbours, visitors, freaks and curious that during last year have passed from here, creating new collaborations and stimulations and great events. You are too much to mention but you are in our heart! ( and in our pictures!)

xlab new wall!

XLab new wall! painted by Awer, BlackMaui, Poiss, Tenia, Mork, Irwin, Flint, Hermann and Bimer on the 3 days-event for our 1st Anniversary!

ECFC isolation -performance 17.07

performance by ARK kollettivo roma/berlino
at XLAB BDAY 17.07.2010

D.I.Y. atelier renowed!

visit our d.i.y. atelier

catalogue on line on www.xlaboratory.org