Mischa Leinkauf
Fiction of a Non-Entry
Jan 31, 2020 – Feb 15, 2020
PYLON-Lab, Dresden, Germany
Opening: Jan 31, 2020 | 6 pm

PYLON-Lab is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition “Fiction of a Non-Entry” by conceptual artist Mischa Leinkauf, opening on Friday, January 31st at 6pm.

In his artistic practice, Leinkauf deals with boundaries and restrictions of both theoretical and physical manner: Leinkauf investigates how rules and legislation constitute limitation of space through their materialization in forms of barriers and borders.

The exhibition “Fiction of a Non-Entry” presents Leinkauf’s latest and eponymous video work from 2019 in which you see the artist crossing the underwater extensions of state borders. The places appearing in the video are representative of countless underwater zones of states that share a common sea shore line. These high-security zones, which are guarded by the military, often have fences protruding up to 30 metres from the shore into the water. For the work, Leinkauf filmed at the border between Israel and Jordan, or Egypt in the Red Sea as well as at the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the northern shore of Morocco.

Crossing these borders whilst diving becomes a performative act of questioning the significance and impact of control systems. As the video traces Leinkauf’s border walk, the bottom of the sea becomes an international interspace, a space between freedom and sovereignty, between the absurdity of borders and a seemingly unlimited no-man’s land under the sea.

The exhibition at PYLON-Lab also features the video work “Symbolic Threads” (2015) from Leinkauf’s collaboration with Matthias Wermke, with whom he forms the adventurous artist duo Wermke/Leinkauf.

The exhibition is kindly supported by Kulturstiftung des Freistaat Sachsen, by Landeshauptstadt Dresden – Amt für Kultur und Denkmalschutz and by Ostsächsische Sparkasse Dresden.