Matti Braun

Alien

In addition to the work of Matti Braun, this book focuses in particular on Bengali science fiction and aspects of modernism in India in the second half of the 20th century. It has been compiled in close collaboration with the co-editors Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, an Associate Professor of Global Cultural Studies in Oslo, and Beth Citron, a New York-based curator specialising in modern art from South Asia. When you see Matti Braun's batiks and silk paintings in the exhibition space and how he presents historical saris in the same setting, you get an idea of what it means when it is said that the artist examines unexpected, often little-known effects of intercultural dynamics and makes patterns of artistic migration and cultural disregard visible. Here is his enchantingly beautiful silk painting, which touches on both minimalism and pop art, there are the historical fabrics of the traditional garment, a wrap skirt, which is worn from India to Nepal and, in addition to festive designs, offers the wearer almost super-practical possibilities in everyday life in subtropical countries and is now traded at auctions and hung and framed as a picture in museums in Asia and Europe. This book goes one step further, offering comprehensive insights into the associative network that underlies Matti Braun's works of recent years. One aspect is the story of the never-realised film "The Alien" by Indian director and author Satyaiit Ray, which he was supposed to produce for one of the major Hollywood studios in the mid-1960s. Steven Spielberg's mega-blockbuster "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" was then released in 1982 - it is still disputed today whether this film was plagiarised or not. However, Matti Braun takes this further in a spectacular way, because he is interested in the whole scene behind it, and so, together with his co-editors Bodhisattva Chattopadhy and Beth Citron, he ignites a veritable "Bengali" firework display when they reveal the early science fiction culture of the Indian subcontinent, the stories of the various magazines, authors and books, the effects on Bollywood and even the political ambitions of the Indian missile programme: An exciting story!

Exhibition:
Esther Schipper Gallery, Berlin, 17/1-22/2/2020