Standläufer – Projekt / MTWTF
18 Mar - 17 Apr 2011
STANDLÄUFER – PROJEKT / MTWTF
Lou Galopa, Ina Holitzka
18 March - 17 April 2011
These two exhibitions present the work produced by the 2010 laureates of the art exchange programme between CEAAC and the City of Frankfurt am Main.
Standlaüfer – Projekt
The German artist Ina Holitzka addresses two fundamental issues : firstly, the question of movement in space and its perception, an essential question in any installation but which is pushed further in Holitzka’s case to its most pragmatic aspect, namely the viewer’s footsteps ; secondly, the reflection on the linguistic expressions that take account of our relationship with the footstep, advancing and standing still, expressions which she compiles and re-uses as a play on words.
‘‘Standlaüfer – Projekt : Strasbourg’’ was brought to a successful conclusion during the residency of the artist at CEAAC in Strasbourg in 2010, after two initial productions in Germany at Bad Soden and Wiesbaden. Standlaüfer (from ‘‘Laüfer’’, carpet, and ‘‘stand’’, from the root ‘‘stehen’’) is a seven-metre carpet bearing seven expressions, often imperative (‘‘Nix geht’’, Nothing works, ‘‘Los geht’s’’, Let’s go, ‘‘Lass gehn’’, Let it go, ‘‘Es geht’’, It’s fine, ‘‘Geht doch’’, It works, ‘‘Geh doch’’, Go ahead, ‘‘Geh’s an’’, Go on), and that the artist situates in seven locations in the city, rolled out, in an enclosed space or outside, on a stairway – immediately giving it a ceremonial aspect – or rolled up, as if it were itself in transit.
Thus deploying the same object in various thoroughfares is far from trivial for this artist who has widely explored the frontier between the similar and the different, most notably in her series Simili (‘‘similar’’ in Latin). Holitzka refers to each device she puts in place (in this case a carpet, but elsewhere a stencil, for example) as a ‘‘module’’ which, for each installation, is only subjected to a minimal modification of placement, orientation and disposition – but it becomes something else every time. In an analogous manner, it is only a very slight inflection of the word ‘‘go’’ that generates the expressions she displays in her installations in various ways.
MTWTF
MTWTF is the result of a project about urban dynamics that Lou Galopa undertook in 2010, during a residency in Frankfurt am Main supported by CEAAC : more precisely, it concerns a reflection on the spaces of circulation in the city and the possibilities for encounters they provide.
The artist built several scaled-down models of the city in which architectural precision was less important than the representation of flux : the buildings are the size of the visitors invited to circulate amongst them, the streets become corridors and some of them lead to dead ends which can only be exited by backtracking.
The final stage of this piece, today presented within the framework of the exhibition MTWTF at CEAAC’s International Space, has led to a growing dematerialization of the buildings, thus favourising the search for a representation of individual dynamics in urban space. Lou Galopa thus stages simple small blocks of painted wood with, on one face, a human silhouette and, on the other, elements of the map of a city she can rearrange at will. Inspired by the dystopia of Samuel Beckett’s ‘‘The Lost Ones’’, she explores the theme of the physical proximity of individuals in the same space and their interactions : every day of the week she films the different ways in which the little human blocks tumble into one another like dominos creating a chain reaction that changes every time.
Lou Galopa, Ina Holitzka
18 March - 17 April 2011
These two exhibitions present the work produced by the 2010 laureates of the art exchange programme between CEAAC and the City of Frankfurt am Main.
Standlaüfer – Projekt
The German artist Ina Holitzka addresses two fundamental issues : firstly, the question of movement in space and its perception, an essential question in any installation but which is pushed further in Holitzka’s case to its most pragmatic aspect, namely the viewer’s footsteps ; secondly, the reflection on the linguistic expressions that take account of our relationship with the footstep, advancing and standing still, expressions which she compiles and re-uses as a play on words.
‘‘Standlaüfer – Projekt : Strasbourg’’ was brought to a successful conclusion during the residency of the artist at CEAAC in Strasbourg in 2010, after two initial productions in Germany at Bad Soden and Wiesbaden. Standlaüfer (from ‘‘Laüfer’’, carpet, and ‘‘stand’’, from the root ‘‘stehen’’) is a seven-metre carpet bearing seven expressions, often imperative (‘‘Nix geht’’, Nothing works, ‘‘Los geht’s’’, Let’s go, ‘‘Lass gehn’’, Let it go, ‘‘Es geht’’, It’s fine, ‘‘Geht doch’’, It works, ‘‘Geh doch’’, Go ahead, ‘‘Geh’s an’’, Go on), and that the artist situates in seven locations in the city, rolled out, in an enclosed space or outside, on a stairway – immediately giving it a ceremonial aspect – or rolled up, as if it were itself in transit.
Thus deploying the same object in various thoroughfares is far from trivial for this artist who has widely explored the frontier between the similar and the different, most notably in her series Simili (‘‘similar’’ in Latin). Holitzka refers to each device she puts in place (in this case a carpet, but elsewhere a stencil, for example) as a ‘‘module’’ which, for each installation, is only subjected to a minimal modification of placement, orientation and disposition – but it becomes something else every time. In an analogous manner, it is only a very slight inflection of the word ‘‘go’’ that generates the expressions she displays in her installations in various ways.
MTWTF
MTWTF is the result of a project about urban dynamics that Lou Galopa undertook in 2010, during a residency in Frankfurt am Main supported by CEAAC : more precisely, it concerns a reflection on the spaces of circulation in the city and the possibilities for encounters they provide.
The artist built several scaled-down models of the city in which architectural precision was less important than the representation of flux : the buildings are the size of the visitors invited to circulate amongst them, the streets become corridors and some of them lead to dead ends which can only be exited by backtracking.
The final stage of this piece, today presented within the framework of the exhibition MTWTF at CEAAC’s International Space, has led to a growing dematerialization of the buildings, thus favourising the search for a representation of individual dynamics in urban space. Lou Galopa thus stages simple small blocks of painted wood with, on one face, a human silhouette and, on the other, elements of the map of a city she can rearrange at will. Inspired by the dystopia of Samuel Beckett’s ‘‘The Lost Ones’’, she explores the theme of the physical proximity of individuals in the same space and their interactions : every day of the week she films the different ways in which the little human blocks tumble into one another like dominos creating a chain reaction that changes every time.