STATE: Cohort Now

Matthew L. Douglas (GB), Romana Londi (IT),
Tim Plamper (DE), Marje Len Murusalu (EE)

´Cohort Now´ at Freies Museum Berlin exclusively displays the artistic positions of the core of the STATE: members.

The exhibition’s central theme will be the question for the limits of law. Law - not just in terms of statute, rights or privilege, but also as responsibilities and directives. In doing so each member’s particular provenance and diversity of their individual artistic and social claims will play an important role.

´Cohort Now´ rings rather like a military campaign slogan, a joining of forces with a view to conflict or upsetting of a status quo. Yet the fight of STATE: is not an act of violence. It is the examination of the nature of groups. STATE: is about the friction - be it positive or negative - that yields the potential to make thoughts flexible and to enable new insights. This is a ´pacifistic conflict´, for it is this fighting spirit and necessity of cohesion that STATE: will harness in Berlin.

Tim Plamper shows a new series of drawings arranged as one temporary wall installation. His works question causality as the main basis for the legitimation of human action. In associative and subconscious linking he searches for non-determinative alternatives.

Marje Len Murusalu presents three new oil paintings from the series "Perceptual Zones" including the largest work "Pandemonium" that draws attention to the top crisis hotspots of the world.

Romana Londi will present a series of new drawings and paintings, which focus on recurrent forms of representations. Her work questions the signification of institutional signs and discourses. She is interested in the resignifications of dominant iconographic signs in visual culture, focusing on paradoxes and contradictions.

Matthew Douglas premiers three sculptural pieces. His current practice examines closer than ever before the durational life of matter. This work will be destroyed following the exhibitions closure.

In the spirit of STATE: the featured artists will also present a collaborative video work entitled "Why Do I Do This Every Day?" dealing with issues of law, regulations, rules and restrictions that stifle and embody our daily lives.

If you search for further meanings of the word ´cohort´ you find another definition in statistics. Where it is used to designate groups of subjects who have shared a particular experience at a particular time. Both these meanings are relevant for the work of STATE:

You may ask STATE: “Why NOW?”
...they will reply: “Whenever else!”