| Summary: | DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM is pleased to announce our third solo show in Berlin of Simon Mullan, featuring a sculptural environment in the main gallery. Titled SPACERS, the exhibition consists of a construction of fifty-eight wall-mounted hand-carved stone crosses, specifically sized and spaced on the four walls of the room. The grids and the negative spaces they define are an enlarged representation of standard-issue bathroom tiles. The stone reliefs hover over a deep blue wall-to-wall carpet, a reference to a 90s industrial trade fair setting as a symbolic space of economic opportunity. Additional sculptural and video works in the show highlight the labor history of the artist?s current studio on the premises of the former Baustoffe Stolpe GmbH.00The dilapidated former concrete plant in Stolpe in Brandenburg?the plans for its future envision a gradual transformation into a ?culture park??is a case in point, with construction materials and products handsomely crumbling under the elements: cast-concrete pipe elements, concrete slabs, heaps of gravel lie scattered across the premises right on the Hohensaaten Canal, which runs parallel to the Oder river. A website put up by the new owners solicits ?makers & thinkers? who need a ?workation in concrete? to become tenants, ?take part in the development process,? and realize their ?concrete utopia? (pun intended?) at the compound.00One of the first tenants is Simon Mullan, and one can hardly imagine a better fit for the aspiring ?culture park.? After all, the Berlin-based artist?s work has long focused on the traces of Europe?s vanishing heavy industry and manufacturing sector and the concomitant demise of proletarian culture. 00Exhibition: Dittrich & Schlechtriem Berlin, Germany (05.07. - 28.08.2021).
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