THOMAS ELLER (b. 1964) is a German visual artist, curator, and writer based in Berlin. In 2004 he founded the online magazine Artnet China, and in 2008 was the artistic director of the Temporäre Kunsthalle, Berlin. In addition to being one of the artists presented in PANDAMONIUM, Thomas Eller is the curator of Die 8 der Wege, the exhibition of art from Beijing running concurrently with PANDAMONIUM. For PANDAMONIUM he shows work responding to themes and influences from China.
 

THE white male complex (endgames), 2014

THE white male complex (endgames) is the working title of a series of art works, performances and talks by artist, curator Thomas Eller, in which he navigates the cultural plateau we have all entered in the West. With little chance for change we are collectively engaged in re-spelling the vocabulary developed by artists generations in the past 40 years – a conservative approach to progress resulting in endless artistic endgames. At PANDAMONIUM he puts this approach in stark contrast with a group of media artist from Shanghai largely unencumbered by such deliberations.

WORKS ON PAPER II: PANDAMONIUM
 

For the MPA-B Month of Performance Art Berlin 2014, MOMENTUM reprises its month-long program of Performance Sundays entitled WORKS ON PAPER. WORKS ON PAPER II inverts classic assumptions of paper as a medium, inviting performance artists to approach paper not as a static blank canvas, but as a dynamic source of conceptual and performative possibility. This year’s WORKS ON PAPER takes place parallel to MOMENTUM’s exhibition PANDAMONIUM: Media Art from Shanghai. PANDAMONIUM is the collision of Panda Diplomacy – China’s longstanding practice of sending cute fluffy mammals into the world – with its most enticing cultural export of the day: Contemporary Art. WORKS ON PAPER II focuses on China, where the painting of calligraphy, from its very origins, has a performative aspect. The WORKS ON PAPER II performance series explores how artists from a culture with an ancient artistic tradition of works on paper transform this medium through performance. Engaging all aspects of performance, the outstanding artists in this series use sound, installation, lectures, workshops, and video to work on paper and with paper to activate all the possibilities of the medium in unexpected ways.

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