Hell is Other People/Radio — GROVE London + Berlin

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Hell is Other People/Radio
A Solo Exhibition by Nick Klein
01.09.23 - 13.10.23
GROVE BERLIN
Greifswalderstr. 5, 10405, Berlin, DE

Opening: Friday, September 1st, 6-9 pm

RADIO LINK: HELLISOTHERPEOPLE.XYZ

GROVE is excited to present Hell is Other People/Radio, a solo exhibition by Nick Klein, running from September 1st, 2023, to October 14th, 2023. This is the second time that the gallery has worked with Klein, and the first solo exhibition that he has had with the gallery.

Hell is Other People/Radio takes its name from a line in Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit (1944), in which the three main characters find that hell is indeed an inescapable room with other people. Ironically, however, hell becomes a reflection on the self – it is the revelation of oneself in other people that proves most unbearable. Yet, what Klein posits is neither so negative nor so definitive: Klein’s suggested discomfort ironizes his own fluidity between a studio practice intent on the production of 2D works, primarily on paper, and a more social(ized) sound practice. If Klein’s work operates as a reflection of his relationship to various social, political, economic, and artistic contexts, the discontent that drives his near-constant, multi-medial production stems from within.

In turn, the visitor is encouraged to move between and cognitively merge this multitude of inputs and outputs. Meant to be viewed en masse, the overabundance of stimuli in Klein’s 2D work appears akin to the enveloping nature of sound. The viewer is prone to awe in the Biblical sense—meaning is made through simultaneous combination and rejection, unable to take it in all at once. At times gently, at times forcefully; at times sincerely, and at times ironically, Klein makes clear: rapture has no preference of mode, only effect.

Hell is Other People/Radio’s sound element will exist (at varying intervals) throughout the duration of the exhibition, streamed online. Klein, along with the gallery, will organise programming, weaving together the communities within which the artist and gallery live and work. In this instance, meaning is itself articulated by other people: guests join to share their work, ideas, and secrets, giving credence to Klein’s practice that at every turn invokes the potential for collaboration. Yet, as Klein serves as the locomotive for this group production, the essence of the show is brought full-circle: the desire to create repeatedly, without end, reveals a wholly internal impulse.

For GROVE, Hell is Other People/Radio opens a new chapter with both its program and the kinds of exhibitions the gallery hosts. Radical in content and form, Hell is Other People/Radio leaves little question as to the gallery’s willingness to act as a home to some of today’s most interrogative thinkers.