Amna Elhassan, Jump Higher, 2023

Politics of Love

30.11.2024–2.2.2025

Participating artists: Mounira Al Solh, Francis Alÿs, Isaac Chong Wai, Anna Ehrenstein, Amna Elhassan, FAIRY BOT (Jon Frickey, Thies Mynther, Sandra Trostel), Robert Filliou, Parastou Forouhar, Green Go Home (Rirkrit Tiravanija & Tomas Vu), Johan Grimonprez, Elza Gubanova & Leon Seidel, Shilpa Gupta, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Soyon Jung, Hiwa K, Rebecca Katusiime & Emmanuel Oloya, Tilman Küntzel, Lulu MacDonald, Nicholas Odhiambo Mboya, Sabine Mohr, Dan Peterman, Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Wolf Vostell

We’re all against war. But what are we for? Peace, we say. What is peace?

Highlighting this key question, the Art-of-Peace Biennale was launched in 1985 on the initiative of Fluxus artist Robert Filliou at the Kunsthaus Hamburg and Kunstverein in Hamburg. Today, some 40 years later, in our time of mounting global crises, war violence and massive suffering, this question remains highly acute. While national and individual divisions are increasing, essential visions for joint solutions and coalitions of action, from which new concepts of networking and collaboration might take shape, are vanishing.

Curated by Dr. Belinda Grace Gardner and Anna Nowak

https://kunsthaushamburg.de/en/politics-of-love/

Accompanying online publication:

https://politics-of-love.kunsthaushamburg.de/en

Ill.: Discovery of the Gluon, 1979, 3-Jet-Kollisionsereignis, gemessen im JADE-Detektor, DESY

FORCES OF ATTRACTION

[ARTSCIENCELAB, Hamburg]

The energies of gravitation that pervade the entire universe are at the center of the exhibition FORCES OF ATTRACTION. Conceived for spaces at the DESY research center in Hamburg, it takes shape from mutiple interconnections between art and science that manifest themselves in a media-spanning spectrum of works comprised of video projections, spatial installations, photography, painting, sculptures, and prints. It was realized in the context of  ARTSCIENCELAB, Hamburg: a new, independent platform for interdisciplinary exchange and knowledge transfer.

Curated by Dr. Belinda Grace Gardner (art theorist, Hamburg) in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Christian Schwanenberger (University of Hamburg/ DESY).

Participating artists:

Marc Einsiedel, Marcel Große, Tanja Hehmann, Simone Kessler, Julia Münstermann, Jana Schumacher

Opening: 1. Science City Day, Samstag, 1. Juni 2024, 11:00-19:00.

Finissage: Donnerstag, 6. Juni, 2024, DESY-Campus Geb. 26 (DAF), 18 h.

DESY, Notkestraße 85, 22607 Hamburg

https://artmeetsscience.desy.de/9_forces_of_attraction/information/

Jochen Messer, LKL_kh_47.2, 2024

Oblique. Navigations between Slanted Angles and Shadow Zones

March 16 through April 6, 2024

Participating artists: Peter Boué, Lutz Dammbeck, Dorothee Daphi, Forensic Architecture, Kolja Gollub, Ole Henrik Hagen, Anke Herrmann, Achim Hoops, Katharina Kohl, Almut Linde, Filipe Lippe, Michaela Melián, Jochen Messer, Sabine Mohr, Mariella Mosler, Roberto Ohrt, Luka Papić / Branka Majstorović, Katja Pilipenko, Dagmar Rauwald, Aron Sekelj, Youssef Tabti, Knut Wittmaack, Ting Zhang.

The nonstop data flow pervading global capitalist societies in the digital era promises seamless access to vast pools of  information, while obscuring reality through an invisible pattern of blind spots and dead angles. The underlying events and crises taking place today are hidden and systematically, ruthlessly distorted behind the smokescreens and false fronts of economic power. Seeking orientation in our increasingly violent, opaque world, we are led to believe that the realities we are inhabiting are ultra-transparent and coherent. And yet we are running up against both material and immaterial barriers that are as disconcerting as they are unfathomable: hermetic obstructions triggering an omnipresent, all-encompassing fear that “both occupies us and preoccupies us.”[1] In this politically driven environment of fear,” [2] nothing is as it seems, and everything is otherwise. As in a hall of mirrors diverting our gaze, it throws back warped reflections that elude our grasp.

OBLIQUE. Navigations between Slanted Angles and Shadow Zones, presented in the exhibition spaces of the independent, artist-run research and project lab 8. Salon in Hamburg, addresses the uncanny and potentially dangerous conditions defining our current socio-political environments as well as our personal and collective emotional spheres. In their works, the participating artists are investigating both that which is concealed and those who seek to conceal, exploring oblique angles and shadow realms in which the secluded and repressed layers of today's reality become manifest and reveal themselves.

[1] Cf. Paul Virilio, The Administration of Fear, with Bertrand Richard, transl. into the Engl. By Ames Hodges, semiotext(e) intervention series 10, Cambridge Mass./London: MIT Press, 2012, p. 14. 

[2] Cf. ibid, pp. 14; 45. 

8. Salon, Trommelstr. 7, 20359 Hamburg-St. Pauli: http://8salon.net

RADICAL TWILIGHT. EXPEDITIONS INTO THE GRAY ZONES OF REALITY

Exhibition: June 2019

Frappant Gallery, Hamburg

The phenomena of dissolution and dissipation that permeate our present-day world form the ephemeral coordinates of RADICAL TWILIGHT. Expeditions into the Gray Zones of Reality. The point of departure is the rapid acceleration of our everyday environment, which is becoming increasingly elusive. The exhibition explores the blind spots beyond the data highways and smooth user interfaces, tracing the hidden realities and truths behind the omnipresent flow of images and words. In the gray zones and parallel dimensions on the edges and undersides of reality, the contours of perception grow sharper: the uncanny, the hidden, the mysterious, and the opaque manifest themselves as sites of reflection and friction that lead to an enhanced state of lucidity.

Participating artists: Maksim Artemiev, Ina Arzensek, Gleb Bas, Sarah-Christina Benthien, Carly May Borgstrom, Peter Boué, Kyung-hwa Choi-ahoi, Dorothee Daphi, Cordula Ditz, Friedrich Einhoff, Christiany Erler, Jasmine Fan, Uli M. Fischer, Jivan Frenster, Thomas Jefferson Gardner,  Julia Gröning, Hinrich Gross, Ole Henrik Hagen, Dorothea Heinrich, Anke Herrmann, Achim Hoops, Daniel Jasser, Hannimari Jokinen, Andrija Jovanović, Ralf Jurszo, Naho Kawabe, Katharina Kohl, Joschka Korn, Lumi Lausas, Jochen Lempert, Almut Linde, Filipe Lippe, Marc Lüders, Chantal Maquet, Matthias Meyer, Sabine Mohr, Luka Papić / Branka Majstorovic, Daniel Puiggròs Coll, Thomas Rieck, Alexander Rischer, Diana Sánchez, Susanne Sander, Patrícia Sanhudo, Sylvia Schultes, Jana Schumacher, Aron Sekelj, Silke Silkeborg, Malte Stienen, Klara Stoyanova, Youssef Tabti, Nikos Valsamakis

Curator: Belinda Grace Gardner

https://frappant.org/galerie/ausstellung/news/radical-twilight/

Hinrich Gross, Psychogeographic Junction, Lichtinstallation, 2015,  Installation view, Kunsthalle Bratislava, Slovakia, 2015

PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC JUNCTION.

RE/READING BRATISLAVA

Kunsthalle Bratislava, Sept.–Okt. 2015

With: Hinrich Gross, Jan Köchermann, Almut Linde, and Youssef Tabti

As the capital of Slovakia, situated in close proximity to Austrian’s capital city Vienna and bordering both Austria and Hungary, Bratislava conjoins the cultural paradigms, sociopolitical parameters, and histories of Eastern and Western Europe.  [...]  At the same time, Bratislava is an epitome of the vast changes that have swept across Central and Eastern Europe as a whole following the collapse of Socialism. Prospering through turbo-capitalism’s impact on the region, numerous global firms have set up shop in Bratislava, which has become a hub of the international automobile industry and a home to major software companies.

Before this multi-textured urban backdrop, the exhibition Psychogeographic Junction was conceived for the specific site of the Kunsthalle LAB space, which was established by the newly founded Kunsthalle Bratislava as a laboratory for developing and experimenting with ideas and processes in the field of art. [...] The title of the exhibition relates, on the one hand, to the “psychogeographic” methods of exploring urban environments first practiced by members of the avant-garde, socio-revolutionary Situationist movement around Guy Debord in the 1950’s in Paris, which followed a subjective, playful, non-functional, and subversive systematic. The term “junction” alludes to the central point represented by the exhibition at the Kunsthalle LAB, where the various strands of reflecting, understanding, and perceiving the city meet and intersect in the artist’s contributions. Proceeding along various contemporary psychogeographic paths, the exhibition seeks to open up new readings of Bratislava via the various routes and lenses through which the four participating artists Hinrich Gross, Jan Köchermann, Almut Linde, and Youssef Tabti have entered into a dialogue with the city and its inhabitants.

Kuratorin: Belinda Grace Gardner

KUNSTHALLE BRATISLAVA Nám. SNP 12, Bratislava, Slovakia, 18. 9.–25. 10. 2015

https://kunsthallebratislava.sk/en/program/psychogeographic-junction/

Isabelle von Schilcher, Love/Hate, 2010

Love Is a Battlefield

“No promises, no demands

Love is a battlefield...”

 (Pat Benatar: Love is a Battlefield, 1983)

Western consumer culture has coopted the traditional concept of romantic love and turned it into a platform for mass-effective product placement. The erosion of passion in the constant data flow of the media is swiftly progressing. On the battlefield of love the struggle between the sexes is entering its final round, while the entertainment industry is letting the individually experienced collective yearnings revolve in ever more frenzied endless loops: a frenetic round dance that obliterates all emotions. Today, artists are on the track of the disruptions, downsides, and void promises of love. In post-romantic allegories that emerge from love’s failure, they both give shape to the abysses, ambivalence, absurdities, and devastations of  love and to the possibility that the hope for achieving happiness might outlast the crisis in the end.

Curator: Belinda Grace Gardner

Participating artists: Maksim Artemiev, Carly May Borgstrom, Cordula Ditz, Jivan Frenster, Joachim Glaser, Julia Gröning, Anna Skov Hassing, Anke Herrmann, Joschka Korn, Louise Vind Nielsen, Luka Papic, Dagmar Rauwald, Isabelle von Schilcher, Aron Sekelj, Klara Stoyanova

July 2014, Galerie Speckstrasse (Gängeviertel), Speckstraße 83-87, 20355 Hamburg

https://das-gaengeviertel.info/programm/veranstaltungsdetails/termin/2014/07/17/event/tx_cal_phpicalendar/ausstellung-love-is-a-battlefield-stoerbilder-der-liebe.html

Triumph of Love, Miniature from the Codex of Anne de Polignac, c. 1500,  Speck Collection, Cologne.

TRUE ROMANCE.

Allegories of Love from the Renaissance to the Present

Participating artists (selection): Marina Abramovic/Ulay, Cecily Brown, Albrecht Dürer,  Tracey Emin, Valie Export,  Paolo Fiammingo, Giorgione, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Pieter de Hooch, Runa Islam, Gustav Klimt, Martin Kippenberger,  Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Dora Maar, Chris Ofili, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Cy Twombly, Adriaen van der Werff, Franz von Stuck, and historical Petrarca editions and early prints on loan from the Biblioteca Petrarchesca and Reiner Speck Collection, Cologne.

Whe we speak of love, a plethora of ideal images and counter-images immediately come to mind: we think of glowing admirations and cooling emotions, of a blazing heart or feelings frozen to ice. To wander among the clouds or to plummet into the chasms of despair: these universally recognizable metaphors of love are not inventions of the advertising or film industries. Their roots reach far back to the beginnings of modern western culture.

Curated by Belinda Grace Gardner 

with Angela Stief, Kunsthalle Wien

Catalogue:  True Romance. Allegorien der Liebe von der Renaissance bis heute / Allegories of Love from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. by Belinda Grace Gardner (Hamburg), Michael Buhrs (Museum Villa Stuck, München), Dirk Luckow (Kunsthalle zu Kiel), Gerald Matt (Kunsthalle Wien). Preface: Michael Buhrs, Dirk Luckow, Gerald Matt. Texts by Belinda Grace Gardner, Michael Glasmeier, Eva Illouz, Hanne Loreck, Angela Stief, Ingeborg Walter, and Dörte Zbikowski. Ger./Engl., 268 pages. with ca. 120 color plates, Cologne: Dumont. ISBN 978-3-8321-9049-1.

Kunsthalle Wien; Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; Kunsthalle zu Kiel: Oct./2007–Sept./2008.

https://www.villastuck.de/en/program/detail/true-romance

Tim Noble/Sue Webster, Toxic Shock, 1997, © die Künstler/the artists, Collection of John and Amy Phelan.