PROTOTYPES AND OTHER STRANGER THINGS

Jahresgaben 2023/2024
1. Dezember – 28. Januar 2024

Aram Bartholl, Rana Hamadeh, Neda Saeedi, Marco Bruzzone, Aaajiao, Malte Bartsch, Thomas Kiesewetter, Jeewi Lee, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Viron Erol Vert, Solweig de Barry, Sarah Kirsch


When artists search for new ideas, they explore shapes and forms to express their thoughts. They are often inspired by existing things and bring them into unexpected constellations. New meanings and understandings of the world we live in are expressed in this way. Art develops into an assertion of form.
The creation of an artistic prototype or a process that we call materialisation is a step between the formalisation and the evaluation of an idea. They enable projection and imagination into something much larger than the things themselves. 

For this year's annual editions 2023/2024, we have made a selection of works that deal with this materialisation of artistic alternative ideas and look both inwards and outwards. They are bodies of thought and steps towards giving ideas new forms, which in turn enable new beginnings and orientation in a world in which we have lost ourselves in too many meanings. 



Aram Bartholl is a conceptual artist known for his exploration of the relationship between the digital and physical worlds. His art emojis are his contribution to this exhibition, where the seemingly simple objects deal with complex issues related to social networks, online platforms and digital distribution strategies, forcing us to rethink our perception and engagement with these ubiquitous entities. From artist Rana Hamadeh, we will be showing her newly produced silk print studies, which were unveiled earlier this year. These digitally produced silk prints trace the digital codes or back end of her animated film Standard_Deviation. Reminiscent of abstract painting, the translation of the densely coded images, spaces and motifs into the soft skin of silk allows for a different material engagement with the digitally coded language. Neda Saeedi's Parasitoid Cell of the Desirable Future (2019 - ongoing) is an installative work consisting of snow globes with miniature sculptures placed on Plexiglas tables, forming a viral cell or prototypical molecular structure. As part of a long-term project exploring the notion of gardening and its colonial and imperial dimensions, the work examines the emergence of gardening video games, most of which emphasize growth and cultivation over the industry's more traditional themes of conflict and challenge. The crystal balls contain characters from "Starcraft", with players appearing as robotic astrobiologists on an alien planet whose sole task is to encourage the flowering of bizarre, gently undulating plants. 

From
Marco Bruzzone, we present a new series called Crab Shelters, a study for a system of awnings and shelters for the Canadian apothecary. 

The Membranization series by Aaajiao explores how the self as observer copes with the self that devours pain through gluttony.



Malte Bartsch deals with the ambivalent relationship between man and machine, including our changed perception of time, which, according to sociologist Hartmut Rosa, is based on a "technically or economically induced acceleration". In his edition, consisting of five unique pieces, Bartsch burns smiling emojis into the peculiar stainless steel plates of heat exchangers. Instead of their original function of converting thermal energy, the conductors become a surface for the exchange of stylized emotions in our everyday digital communication.

 Thomas Kiesewetter designs abstract, almost deconstructivist sculptures. He uses industrial material, predominantly sheet metal, which he playfully bends and folds. The individual parts, screwed together and painted in bright colors, evoke thoughts of modernist architectural forms.



Jeewi Lee's sand painting series Fields of Fragments (30 x 40cm, and 40 x 50cm) explore the medium of painting through concept and material, through presence and absence. In a way, they also function as material archives of the world. In addition, we are also showing a selection from the project Ashes to Ashes (2018). She made soap sculptures from natural oils and particles of burnt trees from the Tuscan forest.



Farkhondeh Shahroudi zeigt verschiedene analoge Fotografien als Selbstporträts, eine Selektion von Stoffmasken (Instant Message, 2009) die eine Öffnung innehaben worauf auf Farsi nicht-existierende Worte genäht sind, neben eine Malerei (Bilder im Vorhang, 2000).



Viron Erol Vert's differently colored paintings, which are drawn from color and surface in the realm of the figurative abstract, collect, superimpose and manifest various sketches of thoughts and memories. It is thus a non-conceived, non-conscious painting that attempts to artistically manifest itself in various layers on the canvas in the moment of being mentally and emotionally in-between. 



Solweig de Barry draws on personal memories and her private collection of images in her pictorial creations. Her paintings emphasize the fleeting nature of experience. De Barry places figures and objects indeterminately, flatly and with gesture on the white canvas. The scenes are torn from their context and transferred to a place where time and space seem to be forgotten.



Sarah Kirsch explores in her paintings an ambiguous kind of mirror of the inner world with the outer environment of each person. Her works are poetic and combine an abstract concreteness with a dreamy world of real feelings and everyday surroundings. Photo documentation: Heiner Lieberum