Review of 'Timeline' at KodlContemporary | Berlin Art Link

A large color pencil drawing presents a grotesque, allegorical apocalypse through many detailed vignettes. Men in business suits chase one another while a sentient piggy bank teeters on a deforested hill. A digger builds oversized concrete sandcastles near the sea. Ice is relayed from a van labeled “ICE” to a factory staffed by Ronald McDonald-like figures with hot dog guns and fake smiles. People emerge trapped in human-sized ice blocks and are pushed into an airplane. A missile flies toward the horizon, coffins are spat from a water slide, and the overall scene reads as interconnected violence and collapse occurring at once. The exhibition frames this scale through climate change and historical attempts to summarize humanity’s relationship with nature.

"A line of men in business suits run after each other. A sentient piggy bank teeters at the top of a deforested hill. A digger makes out-sized concrete sandcastles near the sea. In the foreground, from the back of a van labelled 'ICE,' barrels of ice cubes are relayed to a factory manned by Ronald McDonald figures with hot dog guns and fake smiles. At the product end of the factory's assembly line, people emerge trapped in human-sized ice blocks, frozen in distressed positions as the blocks are pushed into an airplane."

"Argimón's apocalypse story is familiar. Amassed together on one plane, the vignettes play out simultaneously, pulling on the already taut thread that links these forms of violence and disintegration together. The vast scale and interconnectedness of the bigger picture is bleak."

"The show deals with the incomprehensible scale of climate change, presenting works by 14 artists alongside a series of illustrations by esteemed Czech modern artist František Kupka. Kupka's illustrations were commissioned for Élisée Reclus' encyclopedia 'L'Homme et la Terre,' a totalizing piece of work first published in 1905 and meant to elucidate the history of humanity through its interactions with nature."

"Kupka's illustrations are symbolistic, some with an almost mystical quality, each attempting to summarize a facet of human existence; such as progress, religion, science, the state."

Read at Berlin Art Link