Intro

04 February – 30 April 2017

Opening: Fri 3 February, 7 pm

Temporary Gallery, Centre for contemporary art, Mauritiuswall 35, 50676 Cologne, Germany

Curated by Regina Barunke

Under the title „Alleinanspruch (Sole Claim)“ the Cologne based artists Arne Schmitt and Nico Joana Weber present an exciting interplay between photography and film, focussing the notion of the so-called ‘autonomous being’ and the notion of the artist individual. The exhibition features solely new works by the artists.

The architect’s gaze at the world: a storage of resources, a terrain to conquer, a plinth for his creation. In Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead”, the protagonist Howard Roark is not only an ideal model of the modern architect, whose buildings are not obliged to any tradition or community; at the same time he is a radical individualist, acting autonomously and creating autopoietically. This exaggerated manifestation of a fully emancipated subject – a phantasm of unfettered capitalism, as Rand constantly preached it – has its price: everyone is on his own. This paradox of being unbound is at the core of the exhibition “Alleinanspruch (Sole Claim)” conceived by Arne Schmitt and Nico Joana Weber. In his photographic series and the film “Mit weniger mehr schaffen (Make more with less)”, from 2016, Schmitt, addresses the practical side of modernism. Based on architect Ernst Neufert’s “Bauentwurfslehre (Architects’ Data)” and his buildings in Darmstadt Ledigenheim (Bachelors’ Hostel, 1952-55), he analyses the consequences of rationalisation and standardisation for the individual. Nico Joana Weber’s extensive installation featuring the new 3-channel video-projection “Land of Enchantment” is devoted to an area whose harsh climatic and geographic conditions defy human habitation. In New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin there are five locations encapsulating the history of mankind in a confined space with heavy contrasts in a kind of time lapse. The experience of landscape takes place here in sensed solitude. One is thrown back upon oneself, grasping the limits of what can be shaped permanently.

Arne Schmitt is a guest professor for Photography at HfbK – University of Fine Arts of Hamburg. Last year he received the renowned Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Scholarship and the 2013 Advancement Award of Documentary Photography of Wüstenrot Stiftung. Schmitt is concerned with social contexts of architecture in photography, video and text. For this exhibition he deals with the Bauhaus architect Ernst Neufert and his „Bachelors’ Hostel“ built in 1952-55 in the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt, Germany.

Nico Joana Weber received the Villa Romana Fellowship in 2016. In her new 3-channel video installation “Land of Enchantment” she examines the elemental and civilized structures of five different places in New Mexico, disclosing human history like in a time lapse.

Opening hours: Thu-Fri 2-6 pm, Sat-Sun 1-5 pm (special opening hours during Art Cologne, 26-29 April, 10 am-6 pm)

Free Admission

04.02. – 30.04.2017

Opening: Fr, 03.02., 19 Uhr / 7 pm

Temporary Gallery. Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst e.V. Mauritiuswall 35 50676 Köln, Germany