golden parachutes

Golden Parachutes in Whitehot Magazine

2009-10-15T17:02:00.003+02:00

Golden Parahutes was recently included in an interview series with young Berlin gallerists that Travis Jeppesenis doing for Whitehot Magazine

Jesi Khadivi is one-half of the driving force behind Golden Parachutes, one of Berlin’s newest independent young galleries. As she is also a contributor to Whitehot Magazine, she seemed like an obvious interview subject for this ongoing series portraying up-and-coming Berlin-based gallerists.

Travis Jeppesen: I’m curious as to what brought you to Berlin and why you chose this city as the launching pad for Golden Parachutes.

Jesi Khadivi: I wish I could say that my partner, Paul Tyree-Francis, and I had looked into different cities to find the perfect place to launch Golden Parachutes, but the honest-to-god truth is that we just like Berlin. In addition to being curators/gallerists, I am a writer and Paul is an artist and a graphic designer. We were both drawn to the city’s dualistic energy: It can be incredibly vibrant, as well as a sleepy place….We chose Berlin as a place to come and develop our personal practices and ended up opening an art gallery!

While it wasn’t on the agenda when we planned our move from Los Angeles, opening Golden Parachutes wasn’t a total surprise for us. I studied art history and theory in college and worked in galleries in New York for years and we had wanted to open our own gallery for a while.

All that being said, there are certain aspects about being in Berlin that make our creative vision for Golden Parachutes possible. We’ve found the artists/curators/academics here to be quite community-oriented and the reasonable store front rentals here compared to cities like New York and Los Angeles make it possible for us to take more risks in our exhibition programming than we otherwise could.

TJ: Your business model is unique in that you also offer “integrated media services” in addition to being an art gallery. Can you expound a little bit on this other aspect of the Golden Parachutes project?

JK: First and foremost, Golden Parachutes is a platform for artists. Paul and I have always had day jobs that funded our creative endeavors and understand that other artists do as well. Paul primarily runs the media angle of Golden Parachutes. Most of its clients are in arts and entertainment. Recent projects have included a complete website redesign for the NYC record label Luaka Bop and a site for the book American Portraits: 100 Countries. Golden Parachutes Media is still in its very germinal phases, but the reason we founded the media branch was to eventually be able to employ other artists. Right now it’s just us and a handful of others, but we hope to expand in the coming years.

TJ: Like almost all of the galleries I am portraying in this series, yours is situated at a far remove from the traditional gallery districts in Mitte. Do you think his helps or hinders your project?

JK: Both! We don’t aspire to have a gallery in Mitte per se, but sometimes we do wish that we were hunkered down in a cluster of other galleries. That being said, things are going just fine in our little outpost out here.

TJ: You’ve already amassed an interesting list of emerging artists, most (if not all) of whom are based here in Berlin. What kind of artists are you interested in representing? Is it essential that they have ties to the art scene here? What kind of general or specific qualities do you look for in art?

JK: Our taste leans towards content-driven work with a strong conceptual angle, but we’re also seduced by the materiality of art. Paul and I love painting, installation, sculpture, etc. What matters most to us is whether or not we like the work. So far many of our artists have Berlin roots and we plan to continue showcasing artists with some connection to Berlin, but next season will see more work from artists from further afield. Zach Houston, the California artist and poet who will be our first solo exhibition of the season, has never even been to Berlin!

I should also clarify that we don’t officially represent artists at this time. We plan to do fairs in the future, but aren’t there yet. That being said, we still facilitate connections between the artists (I almost wrote “our” artists!) and curators and the press. Artists that have worked with us have been included in exhibitions with other galleries through their affiliation with us.

TJ: What can we expect in the upcoming season at Golden Parachutes?

JK: We’re starting the season with a group exhibition on October 1st called Get Free %. It’s a conceptually oriented exhibition that experiments with applying alternative modes of economic exchange within a fine arts context. In other words, the artists will be bartering for their work. I don’t know what they’ll be asking for yet, the artists will determine that themselves, but I imagine it will range from the practical to the absurd. We’re excited to see what happens when something as private as bartering is enacted in a public sphere like an art gallery. My co-curators and I wonder if there will be a big rush on the work, or if people will be too scared. It has the potential to turn into a big performance…

Zach Houston’s solo show, Europeans Take Me With You Please, will open in November. He’s shown extensively in the United States, but this will be his first solo exhibition in Europe.

We’re launching two programs this winter in addition to our exhibition program. The first we’re calling *gps, a series of artist-initiated seminars and discussion modules. These “courses,” for lack of a better term, will cover both practical and conceptual issues, anything from a seminar focusing on close readings of alternate universes in Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada to an instructional module focused on building German conversational skills specifically geared towards artistic/creative fields.

Our second project is a flat-file program. We’re in the process of curating a selection of drawings, photographs, collages, and watercolors that we’ll store in our new flat-file. We’re aiming to have several pieces from each artist we choose. The artists’ work will be kept in individual folders, but the drawers will be grouped by medium. This file will be open to the public during gallery hours. We think it will be a great asset for Berlin-based curators to discover works by international artists, as well as a great opportunity for the gallery going public to have a more intimate, tactile experience with contemporary art.

David Horvitz//2nd Cannons//Kunst-Werke

2009-09-03T19:18:00.001+02:00

David Horvitz's Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film was a stand-out piece in last year's Gravity Art, a group exhibition curated by Rene Daalder at Telic Arts Exchange.

2nd Cannons just published a flip book based on the film that will be available at Miss Read at Kunst-Werke in Berlin.

MISS READ at KW Institute for Contemporary Art
September 4 to 6, 2009

Opening: Friday, September 4, 2009, 3 - 7 pm
Saturday, September 5 + Sunday, September 6, 2009, noon - 7 pm

2nd Cannons Publications, Los Angeles | argobooks, Berlin | BAS/Bent, Istanbul and basso magazin, Berlin | Book Works, London | Christoph Keller Editions bei JRP|Ringier, Zurich | Dexter Sinister, New York | documentation céline duval, Houlgate | Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich | GAGARIN, Antwerp |Half Letter Press/Temporary Services, Chicago | information as material, York | MER. Paper Kunsthalle, Ghent | Michalis Pichler, Berlin | onestar press/Three Star Books, Paris | P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute, Ljubljana | Passenger Books, Berlin/Montreal | Pork Salad Press, Copenhagen | Printed Matter, Inc., New York | Roma Publications, Amsterdam | Salon Verlag, Cologne | Schlebrügge.Editor/Fama & Fortune Bulletin, Vienna | Spector Books, Leipzig |Sternberg Press, Berlin/New York | Torpedo Press, Oslo | Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne | ZINE'S MATE, Tokyo

Miss Read has invited international publishers to show a selection of their artist books and wants to provide the opportunity to examine this diverse and exquisite assortment, to explore it and to take it home. As a genre of its own, the artist book reflects contemporary ways of artistic production and publishing to a great extent and also addresses issues of presentation and circulation as well as new strategies of distribution. Miss Read is a joint event with the publishers argobooks and Michalis Pichler and wants to draw attention to the diversity of the contemporary scene of publishing for the first time in Berlin.

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststr. 69
D-10117 Berlin

www.kw-berlin.de
www.berlinbiennale.de

Paul Diddy in Green Owl

2009-07-07T10:33:00.004+02:00

Paul Diddy talks with the sustainable NYC record label Green Owl about music, art, and sustainability for their Mugshot Monday profile series.

Melissa Frost//Bad Moon Rising 4//Galerie Sans Titre

2009-07-03T15:06:00.004+02:00

Review of Bad Moon Rising in (H)art.

Paul Tyree-Francis: Elaborate

2009-06-13T13:55:00.002+02:00

Paul Tyree-Francis' music received kind words in Acme Siren Check it out and download!

Julia Holter//Scott Cazan performance at Golden Parachutes

2009-06-08T14:28:00.005+02:00

Golden Parachutes had its very first concert and film screening last night in conjuction with our current show, Gringo Rebel by Ernesto Ortiz. We hosted Julia Holter and Scott Cazan, both in from Los Angeles.
We recorded the concert for your listening pleasure. It begins with Cazan playing droney noise music and tapers into Holter's melodious croon and keyboard. Following this captivating performance, El Topo, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky was screened. Stay tuned for more intermittent Golden Parachutes happenings...Photos are forthcoming.

Download

Lucky Dragons//The Generational: Younger Than Jesus//Artist Directory

2009-05-28T14:27:00.005+02:00

Golden Parachutes would like to congratulate our friends Lucky Dragons, members of the inimitable Sumi Ink Club, on their inclusion in the Younger Than Jesus Artist Directory.

Melissa Frost//Bad Moon Rising 4//Galerie Sans Titre

2009-05-28T14:10:00.005+02:00

Golden Parachutes is pleased to announce Melissa Frost's inclusion in Bad Moon Rising 4 at Galerie Sans Titre in Brussels.

BAD MOON RISING 4
curated by Jan Van Woensel

Marcin Cienski
David di Sabatino
Ida Ekblad
Hadassah Emmerich
Melissa Frost
Tony Garifalakis
Asma Kazmi
Richard Kern
Jannicke Låker
Lee Ranaldo
Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley
Adie Russell
Seher Shah
Sigga Björg Sigurðardóttir
Taravat Talepasand

Ernesto Ortiz: Gringo Rebel

2009-05-27T08:16:00.003+02:00

Ernesto Ortiz @ Golden Paracutes
By Travis Jepessen
Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, May 2009

Ernesto Ortiz: Gringo Rebel at Golden Parachutes
42E Kreuzberg Str.
10965 Berlin
May 23 through June 26, 2009

The border, as both physical reality and philosophical entity, forms the backdrop of the paintings Ernesto Ortiz is working on for his first solo exhibition, opening on May 23rd at Golden Parachutes in Berlin. Indeed, it could be said that the U.S.-Mexican border is one of the rare places where the supposed abstractions of philosophy become manifested in physical form. At a time when relations between the two nations are at a tense impasse, it seems highly appropriate that the artist, born in the United States of Mexican heritage, would choose this moment to reflect on the self-created American myth of “the other.”

I recently visited Ortiz at his studio in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, where I got to see several of the paintings Ortiz is working on for his upcoming exhibition, as well as other recent work. The new paintings represent a departure in terms of both style and palette for the artist. Ortiz’s last major series was a meditation on a single photograph – he made fifty paintings based on manipulated variations of Joe Rosenthal’s famous image of U.S. soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima, all done in a loose, expressionistic style, typically with darker hues. The new paintings use bright, even garish colors, and are often rendered in ornate, blanket-like patterns or Liechtensteinian dots.

The artist’s concern with politics and the painterly landscape, however, remains a constant. Still, Ortiz’s new series tackles a rather different form of mediated Americana – the cinematic Western. The artist became fascinated with these films when he first realized that many Europeans base their impressions of Mexico – and Mexicans – on them. “I wasn’t aware of this until I came to Europe. They’re more dependent on this image than the Americans.”

Ortiz intends his paintings to do more than merely comment on this conception of “the Mexican for Europeans.” One of the more striking paintings Ortiz showed me was Untitled (Getaway). The image, of an empty telephone pole-lined road cutting a swath through the desert, is taken from the last scene of Sam Peckinpah’s film, The Getaway. Here, Mexico figures as a romantic symbol of lawlessness and freedom – it is the only safe haven for the criminal couple who are the heroes of the film, the place where the law cannot touch them.

Of course, this conception of Mexico being synonymous with lawlessness and crime also informs the (white) American view of the land “south of the border” – and white America’s fear and hatred of the ethnic other, which informs much of the debate surrounding immigration, as well as media coverage of the recent drug wars. Acutely sensitive to these issues, Ortiz submits his scene to hot colors – a fiery orange-red and a burning blue – as though to magnify the sense of danger and mystery that accommodates this particular notion of what Mexico stands for. In two further paintings of the border, the texts GLOBAL DESTINATION and VIOLENT WORLD emerge in the midst of the landscape, almost giving us the feeling that we are looking at strange advertisements in a travel magazine, rather than the contested No Man’s Land where two Americas converge.

Ortiz’s strongest statement on identity, however, may be found in the painting Adios Amigos, a crude stereotype of a smiling Mexican man depicted in brown. As I was studying this painting, Ortiz noted that census predictions assert that by 2050, over half of the United States population will be brown, making whites the minority. “Growing up on the border,” he continued, “I saw a lot of closet Hispanics. To identify Mexico was to taint yourself. In the United States, cultural identity is all about absence. If you’re white, then you lack that identity. To have any other is to be tainted.”

It will be interesting to see how far Ortiz’s new work is able to go in tainting contemporary European notions of what Mexico represents.

Zach Houston

2009-04-27T12:53:00.002+02:00

Zach Houston has been featured in the LA based arts site I Make Picture.

Emergence Vernissage in Vice Deutschland

2009-04-21T15:17:00.001+02:00

From Vice Magazine Deutschland Blog

Freitagabend fand die Eröffnung der Golden Parachutes Galerie statt und da die Vernissage einmal nicht im Kunstgalerien-Strich Berlin Mitte stattfand, haben wir uns tief hinein nach Kreuzberg begeben, um uns das Ganze einmal anzusehen.

Im Rahmen der Ausstellung „Emergence“, die bis zum 15.Mai läuft, werden amerikanische und kanadische Künstler unterschiedlicher Stile präsentiert, die irgendwie einer philosophischen Theorie zuzuordnen sind, laut der komplexe Systeme und Muster durch eine Vielzahl an relativ simplen Interaktionen entstehen.

Wenn Zach Houston gerade nicht am Strand von L.A. absurde Gedichte auf Trinkgeld Basis verfasst und Performances aufführt, macht er arbeiten auf Papier, von denen er als „Arbeiten auf Papier“ spricht.

Melissa Frost. Eine sehr nette Künstlerin aus L.A. die aber die vergangenen Jahre in einem Haus in London verbrachte, von der das Wasser aus der Deckenlampe kam. Nun lebt sie aber in Berlin und beschäftigt sich mit absurden Statistiken.

Paul Tyree-Francis. Das Bild entstand nach einem Zeitungs-Foto auf dem Julio Camera, der Bodyguard von Britney Spears, die Scheiße aus einem Paparazzi prügelte. Das Bild heißt "People take pictures of each other, julio camera", ha, Wortspiel und so.

Shaun Owens-Agase &Tyler Peterson. Scheiß auf das Kleingedruckte.

Dieses Bild hängt im Schlafzimmer der Galeristen, stammt aus einer Oper und wurde auf der Bühne von einem unbekannten Künstler gemalt. Ein Liebhaberstück, genau wie ihre einäugige Katze Odin, die mich zu Tode erschreckte, da ich urplötzlich die Todesmusik Richard Wagners im Ohr hatte.

Paul, der Besitzer der Galerie, mit einem Haufen Ballons. Später versetzte er viel Besucher in Schockstarre, als sie platzten und es sich anhörte, als würde er frei nach André Breton mit einem Revolver in die Menge feuern.

Melissa Frost und Jesi Khadivi, die Künstlerin und die Galeristin. Die eine hat es in L.A. und London nicht mehr ausgehalten, die andere hat sich in Berlin verliebt.

Emergence Vernissage

2009-04-09T17:10:00.003+02:00

EMERGENCE
Featuring works by Zach Houston, Melissa Frost, Miguel Diaz de Lopez, Ernesto Ortiz, Shuan Owens-Agase & Tyler Peterson, Travis Robertson, Sumi Ink Club and Paul Tyree-Francis

Vernissage Friday 17, April 2009 19:00h-22:00h
Golden Parachutes 42E Kreuzberg Str 10965 Berlin
Tel: + 49 30 86 45 22 22
Mi-Sam 12:00-18:00
www.goldenparachutes.net

Golden Parachutes is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition, Emergence, a group show of emerging American and Canadian artists. The exhibition’s title refers to the philosophical and scientific theory that complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. The works on view mine cultural artifacts like poetry, comic books, tabloid photography, impossible data and film, as well as collective art practices, to articulate the distance between the result of action and action itself.

Golden Parachutes is located at Kreuzberg Straße 42E in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin. Gallery Hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 12:00-18:00. U7 (Yorckstraße or Mehringdamm)/ S1 + S2 (Yorckstraße)

Tyler Person + Shaun Owens-Agase, 2007
Mistaking Our Signatures as a Signature of Our Idea
Letter Press
36.5 x 49.5 cm

Golden Parachutes in Whitehot Magazine

2009-04-07T15:44:00.001+02:00

originally published in whitehot

Noah Becker: You signed on with Whitehot from our Berlin office. After a great run in Berlin you moved to LA, now you are returning to Berlin. Can you talk a bit about your sense of logistics and how your projects fit into this migration?

Jesi Khadivi: Los Angeles was my “year on the mountain,” so to speak. My husband Paul and I lived in Ed Ruscha’s old art studio in the Echo Park hills where Ruscha made paintings of words being smashed or set on fire way back in 1964. Paul and I used our time there to make as much work as we could in relative isolation. Los Angeles has a thriving art scene, but is also one of the few places in the United States where one can experience country living in the city. As much as I enjoyed a peaceful place to work, Los Angeles is just too sprawling for me to live there long term. We love the energy of Berlin and its location in the center of Europe. It’s an amazing place to work.

NB: Tell us about your Gram Parsons project?

JK: I was working at the Edward Thorp Gallery in New York City at the time and was putting out feelers for extra work. I enjoyed working in the arts, but wanted a side project that was…different. I had graduated from Eugene Lang with a degree in Art History and Critical Theory in 2004 and after a year of working in a commercial gallery I wanted to do something more academic. I wrote to an old professor of mine, David Meyer, and asked him if he knew anyone looking for a research assistant. Much to my surprise he said, “Yeah, me.” I set out for something academic, but that’s not what I got. Instead I traveled between New York City and Los Angeles for two years interviewing musicians, guitar techs, and groupies for David’s biography of the late country rock icon, Gram Parsons. Basically I spent two years in cowboy boots immersing myself in LA rock and pop from the 1960s and 70s. It was a delight working with David and all of the hard work paid off, Twenty Thousand Roads was named one of the “Top Five Rock Books of 2008” by Rolling Stone and “#1 Rock Book” by Uncut Magazine in the UK

NB: You are opening a new space in Berlin. Is it top secret or can you let us in on some details?

JK: The space is on Kreuzbergstraße. My partner, the painter Paul Tyree-Francis, and I just signed the contract, so obviously the opening date is still in flux. The name of the space is Golden Parachutes. We'll be showing work by emerging contemporary international artists. In addition to a solo and group exhibition we'll host weekly film screenings and other assorted events. Although Golden Parachutes is a commercial gallery, Paul and I are both really inspired by hybrid venues that offer space for critical reflection and investigation. Ideally, we intend to offer our space to reading groups and plan a few ourselves. We've begun to plan our exhibition schedule and a few events, but I'd prefer to keep those details under wraps until they are closer to finalized.

NB: Do you drive a car or a bicycle in Berlin?

JK: Bicycle, of course.

humble beginnings

2009-04-03T11:04:00.001+02:00

welcome to our blog, everyone. golden parachutes has been slowly opening itself up to its own intentions, slowly, like a tired clam. we're very excited for the opening of our first show, titled 'emergence', highlighting the work of emerging contemporary american artists.

here's a visual aid to the set-up of golden parachutes, "the way things go", by fischl & weiss. the only version i could find has awful music, so please mute your computers... bis gleich!