Exhibition openings

Prince Tshime Kalumbwa »War, Shadow, Pain«
Iva Resetar »Suspended«
Jakub Szczesny »Stretched Pavilion«
Michl Schmidt »Chris Burden Catalogue Presentation by Michl Schmidt«
Zvonimir Marcic »White Cube«
Farzaneh Ghane »Hidden Truths«
Mehdi Saeedi »Racism Crushes the Human Spirit«

Prince Tshime Kalumbwa »War, Shadow, Pain«
The installation of Prince Tshime Kalumbwa constitutes a kind of geopolitics and tries to illustrate the globalization of a country and of people’s lives dominated by nuclear weapons. The attitude of his sculptures expresses hopelessness and hope at the same time; with a special welding technology he develops a frame out of iron and nails that seems to incorporate a rebirth after many years of oblivion, blood and tears in his home country Congo.

Iva Resetar »Suspended«
One room of the Schloss is transformed into an elastic environment through a suspended hammock created for collective use. The loose, hanging net structure changes the protocol of the room’s use, providing an alternative to routines conditioned by the concept of orthogonality. Working with the gravity, weight and movements of the visitors, the hammock swings, stretches and adapts to their bodies and creates a collective search for individual position and balance. It evokes the feeling of being physically connected to the room and to the others within it, playing with the idea of a collective, unstable and shared environment.

Jakub Szczesny »Stretched Pavilion«
Every fellow of the Akademie is invited to take part in the realization of Jakub Szczesnys (*1973 in Warsaw/Poland) pavilion: A random selection based on a game of dice determines how strong everybody must pull the strings to give the pavilion its individual form. The emergence of the physical structure shall grow organically, only predetermined to a certain degree. In this way the pavilion represents a power game between a pre-programmed set of limits and possibilities and the built-in randomness.

Michl Schmidt »Chris Burden Catalogue Presentation by Michl Schmidt«
Since its foundation in 1991, Solitude’s library has been constantly growing. Each new fellow is asked to recommend two books which should contribute to this growth and the range of diversity of the library. During the opening, the former fellow Michl Schmidt will hand over his recommendation, a retrospective by Chris Burden on which he will be working during and after the performance. The video documentation of the solemn handing over during which Michl Schmidt will drop this heavy heritage of the artist on his bare feet can be seen during the exhibition period.

Zvonimir Marcic »White Cube«
White Cube is an audio-visual observation environment, a motion sensitive installation that places the viewer in a self-awareness of presence within its surrounding. It explores natural and artificial patterns, experiences, forms, and puts them in correlation or purposely sets them apart. By its actions, the viewer manipulates the audio-visual outcome, letting him decide which one suits him best. When left by its own, the installation is as neutral as a white peace of paper, as »formless« as a cube. While interacting with the viewer it tries to provoke questions, leaving it up to him to find the answers.

Farzaneh Ghane »Hidden Truths«
Farzaneh Ghane chose traditional Iranian painting styles in order to reveal hidden truths. The subject of her paintings is love, which she believes to be a possibility to experience life in its most intense form. The paintings are inspired by literary fictions from Iranian literature and are kept in the style of Negargary (miniatures), Gol va Morgh (flower and bird) and Tazhib (illumination), painted with gouache, acrylic and watercolor. In the exhibition, she also uses video images alongside her paintings – trying to show the nature of each work to the viewer to better understand the hidden truths in her paintings.

Mehdi Saeedi »Racism Crushes the Human Spirit«
Mehdi Saeedi designs a poster by using the image of a dark-skinned African face, crumpling its features to represent the effect of racism, and underlining it with a sentence in Persian: all humans are equal. The poster is displayed in a darkened room surrounded by thousands of crumpled sheets of paper, each of them showing the image of a different face, coming along with different anti-racist slogans. Observers can unfold the papers, symbolically trying to undo the damage of racism, while still seeing the scars left on the paper.