Mental Breakdown Club

“Mental Breakdown Club” is a thought-provoking exhibition that challenges viewers to confront taboos surrounding mental health and societal norms. Through the intimate and confessional works of Gökçe Balcı and the transformative performances and video works of Michaël Reinhold, this exhibition offers a powerful exploration of vulnerability, identity, and the unspoken human avoidance. With Mental Breakdown Club, Gökçe Balcı & Michaël Reinhold present video, painting and performance works that deal with phenomena of psychologic fragility in every day’s life situation and the often-unspoken tabus that comes with it. Balcı, who approaches the subject from a physical and autobiographical perspective, presents paintings and installations that expose her personal (female) struggles and mind as a tool of confession, in an aesthetically more traditional manner, allowing it to meet with the audience on a common ground. Reinhold, on the other hand, seeks to treat his (male) body as a transformable shell and interacts in his experimental films and performances with the space and visitors as Dr. Bacalhau, one out of many art figure he invented – as an alter ego. Both thematize and move on the threshold of the inevitable and explore ways to make it visible, productive, and performative.