BLACK & WHITE & READ ALL OVER

Urban Spree Galerie presents "BLACK & WHITE & READ ALL OVER", a solo project by the US photographer and visual artist Robert Carrithers.

The Opening will be on Saturday, May 23rd from 18:00 to 22:00 in the Galerie's Black Room. 

Artist Statement:  

"While writing a novel about living in New York during the 1980s, I felt a strong regret about not taking more photos at that time. I was having too much fun. I decided to explore memories of what photos I would have taken if I could have at that time. I would have to take a time machine through my memory to do this. I found doing this was impossible. Instead, I decided to choose a theme of what actual memory is and how it crosses over into imagination. When one person tells a memorable experience for the first time, it’s usually somewhat precise, but the repeated telling of this story changes with each telling until it’s no longer the original memory. It becomes something else created through imagination. It becomes more than what it originally was in the first telling. The repeated stories throughout history become myths and legends, but how much of it is true, and how much of it isn’t?

I attempt to capture my imaginary photographs through my memory onto artwork with black canvas and white acrylic paint to give a feeling of photo negatives."

In addition to recent works on canvas, there will a be a short movie screened during the exhibition, "N3G". The short film is written and directed by Oliver Torr, Natalie Mariko and Robert Carrithers, edited by Jonáš Balcar and Nika Datiashvili. The film asks and attempts to answer the question: Where does a memory live? Set in a speculative near future when human experiences can be encrypted and externally stored, we follow a man as the implant he wears becomes a tool for political hacktivists and the memories he sought to store enter and warp his present reality.

Opening night performance:

“The In Between” is a dance performance specially crafted by Aisha Serrano for Robert Carrithers' exhibition. In this piece, she reimagines Robert’s photographs and memories through bodies and landscapes—spaces where memory blurs, fiction emerges, and new realities unfold in the dance between truth and illusion.

Rooted in improvisation, the performance is accompanied by the resonant soundscapes of Pablo Betas (Argentina) and his electronic-alternative music project, Bungalovv. Aisha Serrano is a Mexican performer who specializes in improvisation and movement research. Her artistic practice explores ritual, animism, the ephemeral, and animality as key elements in discovering an authentic, sensitive, and constantly evolving dance. She has performed on various stages in Mexico and several countries in Europe and South America.

Bungalovv is the electronic music project of Pablo Betas, a Buenos Aires-born artist based in Berlin since 2019. His sound blends Latin American rhythms, wild percussions, sharp trance synths, and complex club beats. Creating an experimental, nocturnal atmosphere where nocturnal, robotic and mechanical faunas coexist.

Bungalovv is a core member of the internationally acclaimed Infinite Machine (MEX/CA) and the Shanghai label Genome 6.66Mbp.

Biography: 

Robert Carrithers' work has been in exhibitions at various galleries in New York, Prague and Berlin. He’s been featured in exhibitions with his photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2017), Tate Modern in Liverpool (2019) and BOZAR, the Brussels fine art museum (2019 & 2020). He has two books published: “City Primeval: New York Berlin Prague”, a book exploring each city from 1980s to present time, how they influenced artists and how the artists influenced the cities and “The Downtown Luminairies”, a compendium of photographs by Robert of 1980’s New York and the cultural luminaries who continue to shape our consciousness. In 2018, he was in a group show “Zeitgeist: The Art Scene of Teenage Basquiat, a group exhibition focusing on the artists and scene around Jean-Michel Basquiat’s teen-aged, pre-fame years” at Howl Happening Gallery in New York City, curated by Sarah Driver along with other artists who knew Basquiat: Al Diaz, Jim Jarmusch, Fab 5 Freddy, Futura, Nan Goldin and others.

In Berlin, he was featured in Atelier Cross Art’s exhibition “Berlin Faces" curated by Carmen Aigner with photos, paintings and silkscreens along with J.Jackie Baier and Maria Immaniel and also at Neurotitan Gallery where he curated a group show “Your Daily Darkness” featuring Miron Zownir and Tina Winkhaus. He exhibited a series of his Prague fairytale series within the exhibition. Last October he had a small exhibition of “Black & White & Read All Over” at the QR Space Gallery in Prague, an exhibition of black and white artwork based on imagination and memory of photographs that Robert wish he had taken in the 1980s in New York along with stories written in white on black walls. It was curated by Ana Ciornea. This all led up to this exhibition at Urban Spree on a much larger scale.

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Robert Carrithers

BLACK & WHITE & READ ALL OVER

Solo Exhibition

Urban Spree Galerie

23 May - 15 June 2025

Vernissage: 23 May 2025 from 18:00 to 22:00