The Darkest Corners documents and explores sculptures by Lena Marie Emrich and an eponymous exhibition.
Emrich's sculptures take inspiration from pissabraga or gobbe antibandito, architectural objects that dot Venice's alleyways and corridors.
Texts by the curator of the exhibition, Marlene A. Schenk, as well as Mario Ciaramitaro and Alberto Restucci poetically and practically elucidate the concept of cohesion that is central to Emrich's work. By exposing what is normally hidden or walked by, the sculptures and texts work together to address the wonder and mysteriousness of how a city sticks together.
Marlene A. Schenk (born 1987 in Frankfurt am Main) is a curator, editor and author based in Berlin. Since her traineeship at the Berlin Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Schenk has been working at the interfaces of knowledge production in visual arts, philosophy and literature. Schenk is co-founder and curator of the independent exhibition space FKA Six in Berlin's Ring Center I shopping mall, which explores the repurposing and spatial possibilities of urban ruins. In her exhibitions, she uses alternative forms of representation as well as the discourses that public space and its architecture are able to enter into with contemporary art. She regularly publishes articles and catalogs on contemporary art in collaboration with international artists, galleries and museums. Her publications include articles for Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Der Freitag, Mousse Magazine and taz.
Lena Marie Emrich (born 1991 in Göttingen) is a sculptor and multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin. In her work, Lena Marie Emrich focuses on the marginal and the social—both topics that are key elements in her artistic practice. Car tuning races, abandoned airports, arenas, hip-hop videos—all these are cultural references that nourish her multidisciplinary practice. Emrich interweaves performance, documentation and sculpture and sheds light on the characteristics of these unique communities. Her works tell of the encounter between supposedly rigid everyday objects and human longings, and conserve them in a simple formal language.
