Exhibitions: Mariam Ghani, Damaso Reyes, Seung Pyo Hong

Mariam Ghani
»Fugitive Refrains/Variations on a Possible Theme: 39 Views of Solitude«

Mariam Ghani presents two projects that respond to Solitude as a site for the projection of memory. In the video work “Fugitive Refrains”, the artist interweaves, with the dancer Erin Kelly, site-specific performances in Stuttgart’s Rotwildpark with architectural and decorative elements of the Solitude castle. The result is a series of Rococo games containing elements of nature and artifice, movement and landscape, mirrors and echoes and display and concealment. The photo series “Variations on a Possible Theme: 39 Views of Solitude” explores, with layering images and texts, how memory can be reconstructed. The resulting configuration of rhyming epigrams, commonplaces, personal myths can be read individually or as interrupted stories that tell ourselves of the past and the possible.

Mariam Ghani (*1978 in New York) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In her videos, installations, performances, photographs, writings and public dialogues, the artist explores how history is constructed and then reconstructed as contemporary narrative. Her works are exhibited internationally; her Internet projects are commissions from Turbulence, artwurl and Longwood Digital Matrix (www.kabul-reconstructions.net/mariam). Ghani teaches in the Department of Art, Music and Technology at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and is a 2006/2007 Akademie fellow.

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Damaso Reyes
»The Europeans«

That “Europe is at a crossroads with an open exit” is something many people are observing, among them photojournalist Damaso Reyes, who presents excerpts from his long-term project “The Europeans”. Since 2005, Reyes has been documenting changes in Europe during its European Union expansion. Inspired by Robert Frank’s photographs from the 1950s on “The Americans”, Reyes images of Germany address the issues of immigration, politics, national identity and economics and at the same compellingly tell individual stories in the European context.

Damaso Reyes (*1978 in Brooklyn, NY/USA) studied at New York University and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography at the Tisch School of the Arts. He has worked since 1997 as a freelance photographer and author. Having grown up in one of the worst neighborhoods of New York, he was always fascinated by how the media portrayed his community. He therefore decided as a teenager to be a photojournalist to break through this limited representation. Commissions and projects have led him to Rwanda, Iraq, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Tanzania and through the USA. Reyes has been an Akademie fellow since January 2007.

The exhibition by Damaso Reyes is presented in context of the Stuttgart Fotosommer 2007.
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Seung Pyo Hong
»Unsettling Chairs«

Although industrially-made products are often seen as friendly, obedient servants, their function as the interface between user and environment is in no way stable or transparent. The industrial designer Seung Pyo Hong attempts to uncover today’s social “cacophony” of daily interpersonal contact with such objects, such as the emotional conflicts that express themselves in the form of chewing pencils or aggressively dealing with objects.

In his project “Unsettling Chairs”, Seung Pyo Hong visualizes hidden and underlying relationships of the user to the chairs, as well as the theatrical aspects of the chair that become obvious in this process. The exhibited prototypes vary between chairs with a portion of self-irony – which either saw themselves up or torture the user – and objects that function as soft shells.

Seung Pyo Hong (*1971 in Seoul) earned a Bachelor and Master of Arts in visual and industrial design at the Seoul National University as well as a Master of Arts in 3D-Design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI/USA. He works as an industrial designer in the United States and has exhibited widely in Korea, China and the USA. Seung Pyo Hong has been an Akademie fellow since January 2007.

The exhibition is on view from Friday, May 25 to Saturday July 7, 2007. The exhibition is open on Fronleichnam Thursday (June 7).
Hours: Tues-Thurs 10am-noon & 2–5:30pm, Fri 10am-noon & 2-4pm, Sat–Sun noon–5:30pm