News - Michel Aniol

Bush Icons

In the green triangle between the busy Teilestraße, Gottlieb-Dunkel-Straße and the Teltow Kanal in Tempelhof lies a small woodland, filled with stories and traces of human existence and activities.

Over the years, the site has repeatedly served as a temporary refuge. The remains of everyday life like cans, cutlery, pans, packaging material, glass, textiles, shoes, and other personal belongings, are silent witnesses to lives that often remain unseen. At the same time, the surrounding environment has also been shaped by these activities.

Just a few meters away, Teilestraße and the surrounding bushes has for years been used as an illegal dumping ground for bulky waste. Car parts, furniture, household appliances and packaging waste embody fragments of a globalized consumer culture, linking local stories with flows of goods. Yet these accumulations are more than waste: they form an archive of urban stories. Objects here lose their function, form and original context, becoming part of temporary conglomerates.

Bush Icons takes these objects found and recovered on site as a starting point to explore their layered meanings and potential for transformation. The work creates new contexts by capturing these fragments and preserving their imprints in concrete. The use of concrete, a material of construction and permanence, stands in stark contrast to the increasing fragility and decay of the discarded items. In this transformation, the ephemeral is fixed, and what was once overlooked becomes a trace that endures. A dialogue unfolds between past and present, between cultural intersections and individual stories.

From this emerges a new form of perception for what is deemed useless. The gaze turns to what is otherwise ignored or overlooked, precisely at the place where it originated. The area itself is a strange liminal space: hidden yet visible, forgotten yet present. Here, nature meets city, order creates chaos and becoming merges into passing away.

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On September 20, 2025, from 3 to 8 pm, a public walk through of the area will take place, inviting visitors to explore the site and the embeded works, that were created over the course of the summer.

Entering the site is at your own risk!

Soft Assembly
curated by Josephine Fity and Jonathan Lieb

Opening: Friday, 12. September, 5-9 pm
Exhibition dates: 12. September – 18. October 2025

As part of the exhibition, I present my work One Selfie Please (2020/23) — 140 C-prints mounted on postcards, displayed on two postcard racks. Each unique piece documents moments when I was photographed by passers-by in India in a given situation. Captured from my own perspective, the series reflects on the ubiquity of the smartphone camera, the dynamics of collective image-making, and the shifting relationship between photographer and subject.

I will be present for the opening and warmly invite you to join me.

Oblong
Maglekildevej 18 kld tv,
1853 Frederiksberg
Denmark

https://www.oblong.dk/

MAHLZEIT...12 Uhr...die Arbeiten ruhen. Alle Werkzeuge, Materialien und soeben benutzten Dinge und Objekte liegen wie eingefroren herum. Wo gerade noch eine Bohrmaschine röhrte, ein Hammer klopfte, Fliesen klackerten und ein Kehlkopf rülpste,
herrscht jetzt gespenstische Ruhe. Alle Arbeiter_innen haben sich in ihre wohlverdiente Mittagspause begeben und hinterlassen tagtäglich an ihren Arbeitsstätten für die Dauer einer Pause ein metaphysisch anmutendes Konglomerat aus Materialien, Werkzeugen und Arbeitszuständen, die Geschichten von Anstrengungen, Teamarbeit, Kreativität und von den Händen, die sie
benutzt haben, erzählen.

Michel Aniol und Meike Kuhnert, Gründer_innen und Betreiber_innen des nomadischen Projektraums stay hungry präsentieren in Mahlzeit ihre Version einer solchen Szenerie im WRG Sensor in einer raumgreifenden Installation, die durch ihre eigenen Erfahrungen als Baukünstler_innen inspiriert und genährt wird. Der WRG Sensor wird selbst zum Raum des Bauens und der Neuordnung und präsentiert sich während der Ausstellungsdauer in einem transformativen Zustand. Die dabei benutzten Materialien und Gegenstände in ihren verschiedenen Zuständen der Be- und Abnutzung und ihren stofflichen Veränderungen im Verlauf der Verarbeitung wie Zement, Stahlstangen, Bausteine, Glas, Holz, Dämmstoffe, Sand, Mauerwerk, Metalle, Wasser, etc., sowie Werkzeuge und Maschinen, aber auch persönliche und alltägliche Gegenstände bilden die Grundlage der Installation. MAHLZEIT beschäftigt sich im Speziellen mit den teils sichtbaren und den teils unsichtbaren Prozessen und Situationen von Baustellen und untersucht die damit assoziierte materielle Kultur, also jene vor Ort benutzten Objekte, Gegenstände und
Materialien und stellt dabei Fragen nach deren Berührungspunkten mit Gesellschaft, Politik, Wissenschaft und Kultur. Vom vergessenen Werkzeug über die verstreuten Materialien bis hin zu den temporären Arbeitszuständen – jedes Objekt trägt Geschichten und Emotionen in sich. Sie schaffen eine Verbindung zwischen dem Materiellen und dem Immateriellen, zwischen der Physik des Bauens und der Metaphysik des Lebens. Was bleibt zurück, wenn der Lärm der Arbeit verstummt? Welche Geschichten erzählen die Objekte, die wir in unserem Alltag selten wahrnehmen? Und wie verwandeln sich materielle Rückstände in Symbole für menschliche Erfahrung und kollektives Gedächtnis? Zur Finissage von MAHLZEIT am 12.01.25 wird ein auf die Arbeiten und die Ausstellung kulinarisch reagierendes und ortsspezifisches Mobile Menu für die Besucher_innen durch die Künstler_innen zubereitet und in der Installation serviert und lädt ein, die Ausstellung aus dem Blickwinkel eines Baustellen-Mittagsessens neu zu sehen und kulinarisch zu erleben.

The visual artists and founders of the nomadic project space stay hungry, Michel Aniol & Meike Kuhnert present the immersive
installation Strange Paradise. The collaborative solo exhibition can be seen from 19.10.-22.11.2024 on the occasion of the
annual program Habitate at the project space Scotty.

The works on display in Strange Paradise deal with a new form of ecology caused by an emerging post-Anthropocene and its
effects on the encounter and interaction between nature and the current and future legacies of human civilization. The omni
present global warming processes and the resulting destruction of nature create new situations every day in which the fauna
and flora of our planet are confronted with the effects and traces of human activity. In addition to the well-known displacement
and extinction of many animal and plant species caused by changing temperatures and thus climatic conditions, as well as the
complete destruction of biotopes and ecosystems and the progressive contamination of soil, air and water, there are also
situations in which nature and human-induced changes are breaking new ground and forming a kind of pragmatic unity.
These semi-artificial, ecological niches and the imagination of their formulations and possibilites in the future are creating the
base of the artistic investigation for Strange Paradise and the resulting works by Michel Aniol and Meike Kuhnert. The
installative elements of the exhibition draw on the aesthetics and functionality of vivaristics and aquaristics, where the
objective is to artificially create a natural habitat in the human environment and keep it alive in order to enable the care, study
and breeding of animals and plants as close to nature as possible.

Strange Paradise visualizes possible scenarios of a not-too-distant and undefined future in which these new encounters
between nature and human-made remnants of civilization are presented and tested. One part of the work focuses on the still
largely unknown and complex life under water and in particular on the ecology of so-called Anthozoa/ flower animals, better
known as stony and soft corals. In a experimental process, everyday objects were produced from concrete, which have been
colonized and kept in hydroponics with corals and other marine organisms for a year in order to simulate a reconquest of future
habitat by marine life. Another part of the installation is dedicated to terrestrial habitats, in which a transition from human
culture back to a new naturality is depicted.

Material
A group exhibition that examines the history, perception and use of material
in the context of art and everyday life

with works by:
Michel Aniol, Joanna Buchowska, Andreas Burger, Birgit Cauer, NK Doege, Tom Früchtl, Jens Hanke, Angelika Heinke, Helena Kauppila, Catherine Lorent, Susanne Kutter, Olivia Martin Moore, Bodo Niggemann, Mirka Pawlik, Myriam Perrot, Lars Preisser, Alketa Ramaj, Adrian Schiesser, Susanne Specht, Juliane Tübke, Tilman Wendland, Markus Willeke, beate maria wörz, Markus Wüste, Pomona Zipser

OPENING: Friday, June 23th, 7pm

EXHIBITION: 24.06.2023 – 29.07.2023
Thu – Fri 3 – 7 pm, Sat 2 pm – 6 pm

SCOTTY
Oranienstraße 46
10969 Berlin

www.scotty-berlin.de