With All of those records; tell me, bee – the second chapter of the project Becoming B, curated by Marie-Sophie Dorsch, Krys Huba turns his gaze inwards: Based on the lyrical figure bee, dey approaches questions of queer identity and affiliations within normative social structures. bee itself materializes in the exhibition in traces that are perpetuated in paintings, poetic text fragments and sculptural objects. Through image and text, diverse connecting lines emerge between the works, which are not fixed, but constantly merge into new formations.
During a residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Krys Huba focused on the institution’s immediate urban environment – a juxtaposition of urban subjects in the simultaneity of their stories, sounds and movements. But not all voices are perceived equally in this web. This fragile urban fabric extends the Krys Huba and integrates the large glass front of Künstlerhaus Bethanien, which thus becomes a membrane that connects the outside – the urban space – and the inside. In this way, dey opens up the institution to different forms of expression and representation – but also creates intimate places of retreat through the spatial placement of the works.
Krys Huba uses transparent lengths of fabric hanging from the ceiling, worked with ink and silk paint, to soften fixed architectural contours in the interior. In the ephemeral materiality of the fabric, the boundaries of the space begin to blur, so that it can rather be experienced as a fluid, changeable construct that questions rigid categories and deconstructs normative spatial orders. Krys Huba embeds new paintings in this mobile structure, in which bodies are depicted in fragmented form. Upper bodies appear as isolated body parts without representing a concrete person or clear identity. Muscles, shapes and scars emerge in a painterly manner, sometimes more strikingly, sometimes more delicately, and seem to flow gently into one another on the canvas.
In the exhibition, Krys Huba also continues his artistic exploration of discarded Ikea Billy shelves, which dey already began in the context of a solo presentation at Mouches Volantes in Cologne. Dey breaks down the standardized formats of the shelves into individual fragments, engraves texts and sketches into the plywood surfaces and then makes casts of these inscriptions in latex. The objects and their negative imprints are assembled by dey in a screen-like arrangement and the flexible, soft latex in translucent orange and yellow tones breaks up the strict standardization of the shelf constructions. This creates porous, permeable constructions through which visitors not only move through but also into – into the in-between, into that which remains fleeting. Krys Huba repeatedly places small found objects and mementos in the shelf constructions, thus creating a multi-layered network of object, memory and narration.
An entanglement that can also be found in Krys Huba’s poetic texts: These oscillate between documented memories and imagined narratives. They are often created parallel to the artistic work process and thus open up additional levels of meaning. During the preparation of the exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, the joint reading and editing of poetic and theoretical texts also played a central role. Text fragments were shared between artist and curator and language thus became a further material – it creates resonances, allows empty spaces to speak and draws connections between image, body and narration. During the exhibition, Krys Huba collaborates with performers, artists and musicians to create performative moments in which both the texts and the artistic works are activated.
All of those records; tell me, bee unfolds as a fragmentary interplay of ambivalences and traces of subjective and collective experiences. In this sense, Krys Huba reflects on spaces – on the potential they can open up beyond institutional structures, bodily norms and temporal limitations.
The exhibition is funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
