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.
Gökçe Balcı 