DAVID OSTROWSKI & MICHAIL PIRGELIS

David Ostrowski & Michail Pirgelis, Nothing Happened, Buchhandlung Walther König, 2016

The artists David Ostrowski and Michail Pirgelis met 2003 while studying at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and became close friends. Both based in Cologne, they have exhibited together several times, jointly initiated the MD Bar in Cologne and are each other's most honest critics. On the occasion of their exhibition "To Lose" at Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren in 2016, they transcribed an intimate conversation about their friendship, their art, their obsessions and their dreams. We're happy to be publishing this dialogue on artfridge [only available in german].

INTERVIEW: ANTJE HUNDHAUSEN & NATHALIE HOYOS

Little Warsaw "Fence", 2012; at ART COLOGNE 2016

– In Collaboration with Deutsche Telekom AG –

At this year’s Art Cologne a well curated booth greets the visitors right before they are entering the main hall: The Art Collection Deutsche Telekom. With a focus on Eastern European Art, this collection takes a rare stand in the collector’s market and is actually one oft he few booths at the whole fair hinting into the direction of how current political events are affecting artists around Europe. Two newly acquired positions are being presented: Nevin Aladağ who was born in 1970 in Turkey, but grew up in Berlin and the artistic duo Little Warsaw, born in 1970 and 71, who are both originally from Budapest although the name might suggest otherwise. Growing up in different surroundings, both positions deal with their backgrounds diversely. However, they find common ground in their mutual artistic focus on matters of heritage and cultural identification.

While Nevil Aladağ, who is mainly known for her multi-channeled video installations and sound elements, concentrates on subjects of external perception and self-awareness shaped through her Turkish-German heritage, Little Warsaw create objects and pieces that process the transformation of the post-socialistic society after the cold war in Hungary. Although both, Aladağ and Little Warsaw, often confront cultural matters with regards to their respective countries’ histories, traditions and heritages, their work has gained a particular up-to-dateness during the latest political events. We sat down for a chat with Antje Hundhausen, Vice president for marketing communication at Telekom and Nathalie Hoyos, curator of the collection alongside Rainald Schumacher.

INTERVIEW: ANDERS DICKSON

work by Anders Dickson, courtesy the artist

Anders Dickson is a 1988 American-born artist who has been based in Germany for the past five years. Having previously studied Philosophy in The States, he is now a student of Monika Baer and Amy Silman at The Städelschule Frankfurt. While Dickson works in several mediums, his dreamlike subjects and unique use of colour make his pieces pervade a sense of the supernal. Inspired by elements of American culture; from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, to the Native American figure of the ‘Trickster’, the artist balances elements of mythology, philosophy and nature in order to confront the mystery of human identity in contemporary society. Dickson’s work is currently on view as part of a group show ‘Der zweite Blick’ at Galerie Scharmann & Laskowski in Cologne.

INTERVIEW: JULIAN STALBOHM

Julian Stalbohm, FICTION JEST DEBACLE, 10.04-23.05.2015 at Ginerva Gambino, Cologne © Julian Stalbohm, courtesy Ginerva Gambino, Cologne

Two weeks ago, news about the second royal hit all the headlines in England and put an end to the country's buzzing speculations about its name, its hair colour or the length of Kate's stay in the hospital. These so-called "Novelty Bets" – referring to a gambling system that allows betting on practically everything imaginable in the near or far future – are the central tool in the current show of conceptual artist Julian Stalbohm: Placed and documented throughout the last year, he approaches the subject of speculation and chance by juxtaposing magnified prints of betting slips that reveal both a handwritten bet and the respective, often absurd, odds. While all slips are presented on a grid behind the obscured window of Ginerva Gambino gallery, the artist built a small stage inside the space and placed three dough-based figures on the ground. Both the dough objects and the betting slips share one characteristic: their outcome is unpredictable.

Julian's show "Fiction Jest Debacle" negotiates the social process of constructing of truth – it speaks of the wish to participate in the fate of life and of chances. I spoke with the 1980-born artist, who studied in Malmö and now lives both in Sweden and in Berlin, about gambling, numbers of sex hotlines, false promises, and the persistent wish to be in control of things – to be a stockholder of the future.

INTERVIEW: MIA BOYSEN

All works are photographs © Mia Boysen; courtesy the artist and Mirko Mayer / m-projects, Cologne

Mia Boysen is a German photo-artist whose works elegantly address the physical and psychological allure of consumer culture. Currently based in Cologne the 1985-born artist was brought up in Johannesburg, South Africa where she studied at The Wits School of Arts. Following her Bachelor degree she moved back to Germany and in 2013 studied a Masters at the Academy of Media Arts Köln (KHM). Her new series of photographs ‘Plastic Manisfestations’ was previewed at Mirko Mayer/M-projects last month, and centres on close-up photographs of plastic curtains. Boysen spoke to me about the production mystery, about fetishism and about the reasons why curtains and displays are the major motifs in her work.

INTERVIEW: NATHALIE HOYOS AND RAINALD SCHUMACHER

Rainald Schumacher and Nathalie Hoyos at booth Art Collection Telekom; © Deutsche Telekom AG; photos by Norbert Ittermann

– In Collaboration with Deutsche Telekom AG –

Two giant and viciously looking pigs float above a cityscape, opening their mouths and chewing on the architectural fundament of civil life. A hand cuts off a pig’s tail; the blood spreads into the sky. Painted inside the booth of Art Collection Telekom, the 1976-born Ukrainian artist Volodymyr Kuznetsov created the work during the installation phase for Art Cologne 2015. It refers to Koliyivshchyna, a bloody Ukrainian rebellion against Poland in 1768; and it asks what could be the next step after such immense brutality.

Assembled by the curators Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher, and directed by Antje Hundhausen, the five-year-old Art Collection Telekom emphasises the contemporary art scene in Eastern Europe. Originally initiated on the occasion of the Telekom’s recently established national companies for communication services in countries such as Romania and Poland, their bonds to Eastern Europe now imply a visual dialogue and exchange.

The collection neither focusses on decorative works for corporate headquarters, nor on big names. It  consists of art works that intend to create a cultural understanding, such as the works by 1986-born Kosovan artist Petrit Halilaj, who currently has a solo show at Kölnischer Kunstverein. One of the collection's major concerns is the support of young Eastern European artists, and especially those, whose works are controversially raising the awareness of social change. Nathalie and Rainald, who are both experienced in managing large collections, have been a part of the small team from the beginning on. I spoke with them about their curatorial work for the collection.

ART COLOGNE 2015

Walter Dahn at booth Sprüth Magers, Berlin, London Rose Eken at booth The Hole, NY and V1 Gallery, Copenhagen Michael Krebber at booth Galerie Nagel Draxler, Köln, Berlin; all works © and courtesy the artists and galleries; photos © artfridge

In its 49th edition, the 209 predominantly German participating galleries of this year's art fair ART COLOGNE are divided in segments of emerging and established galleries for contemporary art and galleries for modern art. For the first time, these segments were separated on three floors. A new tactic, that helped bringing together the young and the established contemporary positions and their galleries: hosting the “New Contemporaries" section on the second floor, the “New Positions" and  “Collaborations" section is held in cooperation with NADA on the third floor, while modern and postwar art dealers are united on the ground floor.

INTERVIEW: ARNAUD LAPIERRE

– In cooperation with Olympus –

"RING" by Arnaud Lapierre, courtesy and copyright the artist

Anna-Lena Werner: Arnaud, how and when did you decide to work as an artist and designer?

Arnaud Lapierre: I don't really know – I have always been attracted to art and to objects. First I studied the History of Art & Archeology, but then I changed to design studies, because I wanted to tell stories through objects and space. However, I don't consider myself an artist.

Anna-Lena: Your work crosses the boundaries between art, design and scenography. Do you consider each direction equally important for your practice? How do they influence each other?

Arnaud: I don't see boundaries in these activities, because all are a support or a medium for being creative and telling or showing something unexpected. I have always considered my profession a way of expressing a delicate answer to a pertinent question. Looking at other graphic and contemporary art, or even contemporary dance and cinema is interesting in order to understand our societies. Although I always tried to banish existing designs from my inspiration, since I don't want to repeat myself or the work of someone else.

INTERVIEW: JOHANNA VON MONKIEWITSCH

courtesy and © Johanna von Monkiewitsch

Having spent a while of her childhood in Los Angeles, Johanna von Monkiewitsch formed a strong sense for light situations and how these influence our perception, our memory and our emotion. Since her studies at the HBK in Braunschweig, where she also grew up, Johanna thus developed a unique technique of capturing and staging elusive compositions of light and shadow. While materiality is a defining aspect of her art, Johanna's works withdraw themselves from any categorisation or stylistic genre: her photographs are sculptural, her folding technique is graphical, her motif is painterly. She employs a formal language that is cleaner than clean, so that small irregularities determine the character of each work, encouraging the viewer to engage in the material's surface. Between the visual rationality and the contextual emotion incorporated in every single work, Johanna continuously challenges the notion of reality and deception. During the interview in her Cologne-based studio, which she received through a scholarship by Kölnischer Kunstverein, the 1979-born artist talked about her practice with paper and photography, her inspiration and her art's resistance to classification.

PIERRE HUYGHE AT MUSEUM LUDWIG KÖLN

all images: Pierre Huyghe at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Courtesy the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris; Esther Schipper, Berlin, © Pierre Huyghe / photos by Anneli Botz // photo of the dog:
© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2014 /

Walking through Pierre Huyghe’s travelling retrospective at Museum Ludwig in Cologne resembles a journey through the topographical map of his complex oeuvre, which ranges from film to photography to sculpture and from architecture to living eco systems. Before leaving the rooms of Centre Pompidou in Paris, Huyghe had the exhibition’s walls cut into pieces and brought to Cologne where they were rearranged in the space of the museum. Thus the visitors are guided through the retrospective as if they were walking into a long tube of walls, where they are bound to lurk around corners and step into artificially constructed rooms. This architectural decision suggests a sense of how the artist is dealing with space: Rather than using the given or deconstructing it completely, the 1962 born Parisian deregulates allegedly deadlocked structures in both architecture but also in his single pieces. 

ANNA VIRNICH: WHEN YOU DANCE WITH THE DEVIL

all images: Anna Virnich "When You Dance With The Devil" (Apr 4 – May 17, 2014) at DREI, Cologne // courtesy: the artist; DREI, Cologne // © Anna Virnich

The flesh-tinted silk cloth lied in a corner of a small textile shop in Sri-Lanka, when Anna Virnich first discovered it. Stained with grease, perhaps serving as a napkin, the salesman refused Virnich's request to purchase the piece, arguing that it was too dirty and certainly not meant for sale. It took her a while to successfully convince him, but eventually she was able to bring the cloth, along with many other textiles and items from Sri-Lanka back to Germany. Now, sewed together and neatly framed on long wooden stretchers, the unchanged flesh-tinted silk transformed into a work of art (Untitled #15, 2014), hanging on the walls of Galerie DREI in Cologne and still smelling of patchouli. 

INTERVIEW: IGNACIO URIARTE

all images: Ignacio Uriarte "Writing, Drawing" at Figge von Rosen in Cologne, Couertsy Figge von Rosen, © Ignacio Uriarte

The works of Spanish-German artist Ignacio Uriarte are extremely labour-intensive: the process for his drawings and installations follows a precise routine, in which he develops delicate systems for each single piece. This routine of scribbling and drawing becomes a source, a clue for the next project. As most of the drawings are based on patterns that seem to follow a geometric logic, they appear neat on first sight. But Ignacio's art always comprises ambivalence – it reveals humor, curiosity, criticism, beauty. Using mostly tools from the ordinary office world and playing with the banality of production-constraints or of an 8-hour working day, Ignacio found a unique way to interlink his practice with his former career in business administration. In our interview, 1972-born Ignacio talks about how this transition came about, about his current show at Figge von Rosen in Cologne and about his upcoming sound-installation at Berlinische Galerie.

JULIA BÜNNAGEL: SUPER SONIC STRUCTURE

All works by Julia Bünnagel, exhibited at during SUPER SOUND STRUCTURE at Galerie Sebastian Brandl in Cologne, Courtesy and copyright the artist and Galerie Sebastian Brandl  

The triangle had a popular revival within the last years: Design of all kind fell back on one of the most simple and clear geometric shapes. Not as minimalist as the square, but unardoned enough to count as a plain form, the triangle may have found a new home in the arts – far from any symbolic or religious values, that it used to be known for. This development is currently prominent at Julia Bünnagel's solo show SUPER SONIC STRUCTURE at Galerie Sebastian Brandl in Cologne, in which the artist utilises the triangle's variable shape as a module for a series of rearrangements and ephemeral sculptures. Bünnagel's artistic vocabulary is consistent – austere and edged, equilateral and oblique triangles reoccur. 

SHOW COVER HIDE. SHRINE

from the top: (1) Thomas Böing "Ohne Titel", 1988 ; (2) Hermann Abrell "Ohne Titel", 1973 ; (3) Rudolf de Cringis "Painting #99.03" and "Painting #99.04", 1999 ; (4) Thomas Rentmeister "Ohne Titel", 1988 ; (5) installation view Michael Toenges "Ohne Titel", 2001 // courtesy Kolumba Köln; photos by artfridge

How the juxtaposition of contemporary art and art from early Christianity can turn into an experience of both dissonance and harmonious contemplation is regularly shown at Kolumba, the museum of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cologne. Originally a parish in the medieval centre of Cologne, St. Kolumba was established as the Cologne Diocese Museum in 1853 and bombed into pieces in World War II. The architect Peter Zumthor renewed the building in 2007 and enclosed the remaining fragments and the Gottfried Böhm-chapel “Madonna in the Ruins” (1949) with perforated walls and a plain and minimalist architecture. Sixteen exhibition rooms, each kept in reduced materiality, vary mostly on the incoming daylight. Their seventh exhibition "show cover hide. Shrine", which is praised to be "an exhibition on the aesthetics of the invisible", is the first show that respects the minimalist architecture by reflecting its subtle and meditative opulence.

INTERNATIONAL BATHING

all images showing work by Grayson Revoir with his show "International Bathing" at Jan Kaps, Cologne / photos  and courtesy Jan Kaps and the artist

Its almost two years ago that I went to Düsseldorf to interview Jan, Benny and Niels - three curators forming FORMAT:C. Already back then the combination of talent and ambition was striking. Insofar, it was to be expected that sooner or later one of them would open their own art space. Jan Kaps finally did the big step and already the first show "International Bathing" proves that the quality and the art he would present is exactly what Cologne needed: Grayson Revoir, a 1983-born artist from New York, prepared an installation-based show that challenges expectations on cleanliness, perfection and construction.

ART COLOGNE 2013 / PART II: MODERN CLASSICS

Daniel Buren at Galeria Hilario Galguera, Mexico City

Laura Ford at Scheffel, Bad Homburg v. d. Höhe 

Booth Hauser & Wirth, Zürich, London, New York 

Christoph Schlingensief at Hauser & Wirth,  Zürich, London, New York

Jonathan Meese at Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen

Sigmar Polke at Michael Werner, Cologne, Berlin, New York

Jeff Cowen at Michael Werner, Cologne, Berlin, New York

Georg Baselitz at Michael Werner, Cologne, Berlin, New York

Jack Pierson at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, Salzburg
All images by artfridge, courtesy Art Cologne, the artists and the galleries

After writing about the contemporaries in my last post, the second part of my review about the 47th edition of Art Cologne will be focussing on the modern classics segment on the first floor. For those of you who have never been to the fair I should mention that Art Cologne is very much separated into two different areas: the contemporaries upstairs, the classics downstairs. While Art Cologne Director Daniel Hug transformed and improved the upstairs area, the classic-department hasn't changed much: Botero, Beuys - Kneffel, Knoebel. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's 1926-painting “Strassenbild vor dem Friseurladen” even made it into the press, as Galerie Heinze & Ketterer had it on sale for 3,75 million Euros, which is said to be the highest price of the whole fair. 

ART COLOGNE 2013 / PART I: NADA & CONTEMPORARIES

Alicja Kwade (door) and Jeppe Hein (letters) at Johann König, Berlin

Michail Pirgelis at Sprüth Magers Berlin London

Thea Djordjadze at Sprüth Magers Berlin London

Walter Dahn at Sprüth Magers Berlin London

Booth by PSM Berlin

Joelle Tuerlinckx at Galerie Nächst St. Stephan

Andrei Roiter at AKINCI, Amsterdam

Peter Krauskopf at Galerie Jochen Hempel, Berlin, Leipzig

Booth by Produzentengalerie Hamburg

New Positions: Booth by artist Valentin Ruhry for Galerie Christine König, Vienna

Jürgen Teller at Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris

Anna Vogel at Conrads, Düsseldorf

David Ostrowski at Peres Projects, Berlin

Dash Snow at Peres Projects, Berlin

NADA: Absalon Kirkeby at Peter Amby Gallery

Booth Soy Capitan Berlin

NADA: Anna Virnich at Drei, Cologne

NADA: Booth DREI, Cologne 
// all images by artfridge, courtesy Art Cologne the galleries and the artists

The German Rhineland is an area with a long and popular tradition of art - its history still influences the art dealers' and curators' casual way of handling trends coming and going. Staying true to its distinctive style, the Rhineland manages to create a calm and unexcited balance between the new contemporaries and the big players - a unique and reliable phenomenon that can be best observed at the current 47th edition of Art Cologne, which includes roughly 200 exhibiting galleries. Carefully, Art Cologne director Daniel Hug moves the fair towards being the most contemporary one that the Rhineland has seen in decades - a welcome and desired change. In this post I will first give you an impression of the New Contemporaries (galleries founded after 2000), the external fair NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance, New York) and the established contemporary art galleries, which are, as usual, located on the second floor, whereas the next post will be showing pictures from the established and more classic Galleries on the first floor.