Exhibition: Kapsel 02: Mohamed Bourouissa

French-Algerian Mohamed Bourouissa is the second artist Munich's Haus der Kunst is presenting in their Kapsel series, a multi-media presentation dividing the one room made available for the artist into two: one presenting some simplistic scupltures and artefacts clearly with emphasis on the topic: horse. The second room is a small cinema where the artist's short documentary film Horse Day is projected. This seems to be the center of the artist's work for this project. It depicts the prepapartions and the event of a 'horse tuning' competition hosted within the small community of an American urban quarter. Although the movie uses some cinematic techniques (like a bird's eye sequence shot from a drone above the field where the horses are presented) and some scenes of dialogue may be staged, it is a cinema verite investigation of the people fancying up their horses with very primitive materials: one horse is decorated with sheets of CDs, another with silver and red stripes of tinsel, again another with cardboard affixed to the horse to represent something like flopping wings. Although it is insightful as a reflection of the nearly innocent creative fantasies of these city dwellers, I found it difficult to grasp within the context of such an 'official' context as the monumental Haus der Kunst (the first of its kind built by the Nazis). I found myself imagining the exhibition's opening evening with Munich luminaries in their dresses and suits sipping champagne and watching real people from oustide their world on the screen.