Club Midnight, Berlin
For ART-O-RAMA, Ilja Karilampi will show a special project based on a selection of his artworks.
The first work presented is The Michael Todd Room (2011) in a new special and site specific version realized just for the occasion. It’s an extension of a private member scenario created by the artist in two different occasions; the first time in his studio space on Governors Island, New York City, when Ilja Karilampi was researching the underground music scene and sculptural destruction in NYC in the spring – summer 2011; and then, in the installation The Michael Todd Room, 2011, during the first solo show at Club Midnight, in Berlin.The artist brought some of the material to Berlin and together with a series of new unique works he turned the installation into the next version, the 2.0.
This title of the installation is a tribute to the Michael Todd’s room, the V.I.P. room of Palladium a concert hall and a night club in New York, temple of music and art scene in the ‘80s, demolished in the late 90’s.
Within this installation, a series of works are shown individually, and as sculptural parts of The Michael Todd Room together with 5 years of collected video works of Ilja Karilampi shown as a projection. The viewing area is decorated with 4Loko cans filled with concrete, an energy drink that contains both caffeine and 12% alcohol, and which is now getting banned in New York.
The Fr3nch Montana (2011) stands with posters of a window covered with purple foil, superimposed on top of a generic brick pattern. Then, Touche pas à mon pote (2011) is a slide projection of shop and street signs shot along the Karl-Marx-Strasse in Neukölln from 2010. The photos have originally been shot on a digital camera, then transformed into slides by photographing the screen of an IBook with a Minolta camera.
