Installation View

THE JOYS

Aktionshaus, Berlin

24 June - 25 July 2025

preview
press release, floorplan and checklist
walkthrough
Crisis of Representation - companion text to The Joys
Precarity & Grace Audio Service - exhibition soundscape
A Divagation - Gabriela Acha on The Joys

Photos by Max Eulitz and Marc Gemini

For the epigraph of his 1974 book Libidinal Economy, Jean François Lyotard adopted a slightly reworked version of a sentence originally appearing in Stendhal’s 1822 De l'Amour, specifically in a chapter entitled ‘Des Courts’. Inscribing his “livre méchant” in the conviction that “[w]ho knows not how to hide knows not how to love,” Lyotard acknowledged concealment as a crucial and generative force underlying the non-plus-ultra of relations. Somewhat similarly yet with drastically divergent consequences, what Stendhal had found in the Provençal tradition of courtly love poetry and conception of “amor de lonh” (distant love) was an exemplary form for his own theory of ‘crystallization:’ the process by which lovers work in absence, idealizing their beloved through imagination and psychosomatic projection and eventually establishing perfect objects of desire (and sustainment). The Joys emerges from this complex libidinal genealogy as an attempt to expose intimacy’s double role: generation and establishment. It does so by folding and unfolding as a vibrating, semantic and material field where intimate interaction and institutioning converge.

— excerpt from the exhibition preview by Aktionshaus

The Joys, installation view

Precarity & Grace Audio Service (detail)
2025
sound system, plexiglass, water-based dye ink, sound mix (5 hour 41 minutes loop)
dimensions unavailable

The Joys, installation view with Girls at Rehearsal (New Leviathan)

A History of Reason as Seen within its Points of Origin
2025
15 office inkjet transfers on untreated UPG 400 grit sanding paper; 15 archival inkjet prints on recycled office paper and vellum; 1 internal angle
18 x 24 cm each (framed)

A History of Reason as Seen within its Points of Origin (detail)
2025
15 office inkjet transfers on untreated UPG 400 grit sanding paper; 15 archival inkjet prints on recycled office paper and vellum; 1 internal angle
18 x 24 cm each (framed)

A History of Reason as Seen within its Points of Origin (detail)
2025
15 office inkjet transfers on untreated UPG 400 grit sanding paper; 15 archival inkjet prints on recycled office paper and vellum; 1 internal angle
18 x 24 cm each (framed)

A History of Reason as Seen within its Points of Origin (detail)
2025
15 office inkjet transfers on untreated UPG 400 grit sanding paper; 15 archival inkjet prints on recycled office paper and vellum; 1 internal angle
18 x 24 cm each (framed)

A History of Reason as Seen within its Points of Origin (detail)
2025
15 office inkjet transfers on untreated UPG 400 grit sanding paper; 15 archival inkjet prints on recycled office paper and vellum; 1 internal angle
18 x 24 cm each (framed)

Precarity & Grace Audio Service (detail)
2025
sound system, plexiglass, water-based dye ink, sound mix (5 hour 41 minutes loop)
dimensions unavailable

Precarity & Grace Audio Service (detail)
2025
sound system, plexiglass, water-based dye ink, sound mix (5 hour 41 minutes loop)
dimensions unavailable

Untitled (Silence)
2025
archival inkjet print on cotton rag
21 x 29.7 cm

The Joys, installation view

Untitled
2025
stainless steel, synthetic lace, office light
127 x 46 x 12 cm

Untitled
2025
plexiglass, washi tape, aluminum
75 x 50 x 7 cm

The Joys, installation view

The Joys, installation view with Untitled (You Look So Good!)

Untitled (You Look So Good!) (detail)
2025
water, plexiglass, lilies, peonies
254 x 130 x 11 cm

Untitled (You Look So Good!) (detail)
2025
water, plexiglass, lilies, peonies
254 x 130 x 11 cm

Our Lady of the Flowers (Rome, May 16, 11:41)
2025
archival inkjet print on cotton rag, pvc, sweat
70 x 100 cm

Untitled (Witness)
2025
office carrier envelope
29.7 x 42 cm (framed)

Boy with Thorn
2025
archival inkjet print on cotton rag
21 x 29.7 cm

The Joys, installation view

Jedermann
2025
graph
dimensions variable

Untitled
2025
plexiglass, nacre
180 x 75 x 7 cm

Untitled (detail)
2025
plexiglass, nacre
180 x 75 x 7 cm

Untitled (detail)
2025
plexiglass, nacre
180 x 75 x 7 cm

The Joys, installation view with GOODNIGHT HAPPY BDAY (The Fetish Diagram)

GOODNIGHT HAPPY BDAY (The Fetish Diagram v2.2)
2025
archival inkjet print on cotton rag, gift wrapping foil, washi tape
84.1 x 118.9 cm

GOODNIGHT HAPPY BDAY (The Fetish Diagram v2.2) (detail)
2025
archival inkjet print on cotton rag, gift wrapping foil, washi tape
84.1 x 118.9 cm

The Joys, installation view with GOODNIGHT HAPPY BDAY (The Fetish Diagram v2.2), Untitled (Finally Home) and Caduceus

Untitled (Finally Home) (detail)
2025
fridge, bar, video, sound, collected objects
dimensions and duration variable

Untitled (Finally Home) (detail)
2025
fridge, bar, video, sound, collected objects
dimensions and duration variable

The Joys, installation view with Crisis of Representation, companion text to the show

The Joys, Andre Mulzer and Olga Hohmann performing ‘Cheat Day’ next to Untitled (You Look So Good!), 5th July 2025

The Joys, Andre Mulzer and Olga Hohmann performing ‘Cheat Day’ next to Untitled (You Look So Good!), 5th July 2025

The Joys, Andre Mulzer and Olga Hohmann performing ‘Cheat Day’ next to Untitled (You Look So Good!), 5th July 2025

The Joys, 5th July 2025

Olga Hohmann in The Joys

The Joys, Vida Vojic performing next to Untitled (You Look So Good!), 5th July 2025

The Joys, Yanne Horas performing in front of A History of Reason as Seen within its Points of Origin, 5th July 2025

The Joys, Yanne Horas performing in front of A History of Reason as Seen within its Points of Origin, 5th July 2025

Telva mixing for The Joys, 5th July 2025

The Joys, 5th July 2025

The Joys, Zack Darsee, 6th July 2025

The Joys, 6th July 2025

The Joys, Hayes Hoey reading in front of A History of Reason as Seen within its Points of Origin, 6th July 2025

The Joys, Filippo Vogliazzo reading next to of Untitled (Finally Home), 6th July 2025

The Joys, installation view