Semjon Contemporary's 10th anniversary is a fitting occasion for it to publish a special edition featuring the works of all gallery and guest artists. It is an opportunity to bring together in a single small space all the artists with whom the gallery and I, as its owner, have worked closely.

In view of the large number of artists, it is hard to find a form of presentation for an exhibition that does not establish hierarchies, e.g. due to the size of the works on display. The given dimensions of the passe-partout and mounting board, which each of the artworks must conform to in order to fit, stacked one on top of the other, into an edition box, automatically establishes democratic conditions.

The exhibition’s centrepiece will therefore comprise two tableaux of frames of the same size that will bring the edition to the main walls of the gallery.

In the showroom and garden salon, as well as in the office, the exhibition will be accompanied by further works, in this case one-offs, in the salon hangings typical of Semjon Contemporary.

A comprehensive book is to be published in early/mid-December that introduces the gallery's artists and their works and exhibitions and traces the last 10 years of gallery activities, including major exhibition projects such as Lieber Künstler, zeichne mir (Part I & II), Penetrating Paper and collAGE. Documentation of project work with individual artists such as Land Art Schlosspark Wagenitz by Takayuki Daikoku, Geometrisches Ballett (Hommage à Oskar Schlemmer) by Ursula Sax and, most recently, The Cast Whale Project @ St. Elisabeth by Gil Shachar and Bibliothek / Library by Li Silberberg will also be included.


Gallery location uncertain; destruction of KioskShop berlin (KSb)?
In these already difficult times, visitors may be puzzled by the fact that the gallery's 10th anniversary is overshadowed by the issue of its future location, of all things. Added to this is the uncertainty over the possible departure of Berggruen Holding, which would inevitably destroy the KioskShop berlin (KSb) Gesamtkunstwerk, which I developed and ran on site as an artist from 2000 to 2011. Nikolas Berggruen from the family of art lovers is now becoming, of all things, the destroyer of a complex work of art only possible in this form in the post-reunification period. It is a walk-in artwork that engages with the retail trade and the art market while at the same time interpreting the memory of old-fashioned grocery shops, war-widows' corner shops and the Späti convenience stores mainly run by migrants.
Before the walls in the street salon are removed to rouse the KioskShop from its slumber before its destruction, the walls are being reused for an installation for which they were originally built a year before the gallery was founded: Construction of Modern: The Berlin Collection of Dr Carl Theodor Gottlieb Grouwet (1919). 
This work of mine will be on display concurrently from 3 September until 3 October.
The KioskShop will then be open to the public again from 6 November.

Semjon H. N. Semjon, Berlin, 20 August 2021

X x X - 10 years Semjon Contemporary

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