Prompt, 2016
Video, 12:56 min

Gyricon, 2015
E-Book (artist publication), Kindle E-Reader and video
10 min

Courtesy the artist

Adam Fearon developed a site-specific spatial installation that combined the filmic works Prompt (2015) and Gyricon (2016) with sculptural structures. Fearon used photographs from his private image archive, motifs such as bodies and spaces, but without context or narrative quality. He explored the question of the dematerialization and legibility of the image when it is reproduced on technological carriers.

In the video work Prompt we observe the artist positioning images on a glass plate. We see his hand applying soaked photographs to the transparent surface, arranging them and pushing them away again. The image carrier has become brittle due to the water, so that the photographs tear when handled. It is the repetition of the repetitive wiping gesture that reminds of the operation of electronic devices. In spite of the extreme close-up, the viewers can only dimly recognize motifs, views of bodies, mouths, or limbs in the sand. The camera’s angle of vision is positioned underneath the glass, so that the viewer can hardly make out the images during their movement and destruction. The artist drew from a private image archive, but through his treatment the images they lost all narrative content. They became pure material that moved on the surface in their materiality, visible for a short time and then disappearing again.

Gyricon is a multi-channel video work. Here, too, the artist’s acting hand was part of the work and the action was an essential part of an ongoing process. For the video’s reproduction Fearon used the Kindle digital reader, turning the text carrier into an image carrier. Here, too, he fed images from his private archive into the system. With a video camera he filmed the manual operation of the Kindle in close-up. His hand flipped the electronic pages, new pictures constantly appeared, but the individual motif lost its meaning. The photographs dematerialized on the electronic paper, a technology from the 1970s that gives the work its title. The e-paper was developed for displays of early mobile phones and electronic devices and represent characters via the electronic arrangement of toner spheres under the screen surface.

Fearon’s work conceptually and formally investigates how the real body, its image and the technical image carrier relate to one another. How is the representation of the real and its technical representation determined? At what point does the decoupling of image and material render the motif completely unreadable? Fearon consciously uses images with strong individual and intimate meaning that remains hidden from the viewer and undeciphered deciphered by him. A transformation takes place that leads to the loss of readability. Filming the image arrangements on different surfaces causes a multi-refraction of visual conventions. The viewer is exposed to a multi-layered flood of images.

Adam Fearon (*1984, Dublin, IE) lives and works in Berlin. He attended the Frankfurt Art Academy Städelschule from 2011 to 2014, where he studied with Prof. Peter Fischli and Prof. Simon Starling. In 2007, he graduated as Bachelor of Fine Art Media at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin (IE). Since 2011, he has received different artist-in-residences, including the Live Collision Residency in Beaulieu-sur-Sonnette (FR) and the FAAP Residency in Sao Paulo (BR). In 2014 he won the travel scholarship of the Hans und Stefan Bernbeck-Stiftung.

The artist has exhibited in the following institutions (selection):
Butler Gallery, Kilkenny (IE), Harbinger, Reykjavik (IS), L’Atelier KSR, Berlin (DE), Büro BDP, Berlin (DE), Room E10-27, Paris (FR), Berlin Art Prize, District, Berlin (DE), NR Projects, Berlin (DE), Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (IE)

In his ongoing long-term project Zoon Politikon, a multi-channel video installation, Jonas Englert presented personalities from politics, science and art who have initiated, and helped shape the history of, social upheavals and revolutions in Frankfurt and Germany. In fifty-minute films, Englert created intense portraits with unusual closeness to the protagonists.

In Zoon Politikon, Jonas Englert spoke with founders of German science, cultural and social policy. He shows them in all their wealth of experience, as narrators of a recent past to which they are intimately connected. The work uses the Aristotelian concept of the political being, the zoon politicon, to examine the idea of the polis; a state model that can function as a civic community, which defines itself solely through its members rather than being based on the criterion of territory.

Englert presented protagonists from a recent past. They tell of themselves in retrospect, as individuals who, through their actions, have moved from the private sphere into public visibility and thus become part of collective history and now memory.

Englert developed a uniformly strict design concept and setting for this work. A consistent list of questions, which was discussed before recording, and a fifty-minute uninterrupted period for each participant formed the basis of each interview. The black-and-white image first neutralizes the individuality of the protagonists, only to then highlight it all the more through the camera’s close-up and rigid focus on the speaking face. Englert employed active listening to create and potentiate an atmosphere of trust in which the speakers could freely develop their monologue and thought process. The classic close-up camera angel created the illusion of closeness and intimacy with the subject. The viewers enter into direct eye contact with the person. In addition to their narration of a collective historical past, the individual language and facial expressions of the first-person narrators provide further visual information about an epoch.

The focus of the interview is on life as a political person. Englert addresses the human being as a political animal, defined by Aristotle in his writing Politika as a being that forms community(ies). As a being that assumes responsibility, both in the context of its immediate social environment and in the higher social structure of the state.

Jonas Englert (*1989, Friedberg, DE) studied art with Prof. Heiner Blum and Prof. Alexander Oppermann at the University of Art and Design Offenbach (DE). For the winter semester of 2012/2013 he studied applied theatre studies with Prof. Heiner Goebbels at the Justus-Liebig-Universität

Gießen (DE). Since 2018 the artist has been a prizewinner of the Frankfurter Künstlerhilfe. In 2019 Englert was also awarded with the theory prize of the Marielies Schleicher Foundation. Furthermore, he created various video works for theatre productions, amongst others for the National Theatre Mannheim, Mannheim (DE), the State Playhouse Dresden, Dresden (DE), the Hannover State Theater, Hanover (DE) and the Theater Bonn, Bonn (DE). His works are part of the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. (US), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (US) and private collections.

The artist has exhibited in the following institutions (selection):
Gallery Anita Beckers, Frankfurt am Main (DE), Jewish Film Festival, Frankfurt am Main (DE), Berlin Art Week, Collection Ivo Wessel, Berlin (DE), Tongji University, Shanghai (CH), Virus Galerie, Frankfurt am Main (DE), Marburger Kunstverein, Marburg (DE), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (US), 1822-Forum, Frankfurt am Main (DE)

In Between Identities, 2015
Game Modding (GTA 5), HD Film
8:50 min

Courtesy the artist

Aleksandar Radan describes himself as a filmmaker in search of innovative forms of filmic work. His works move between animation and documentary film, making use of the experience of fictional and real figures from the internet. Radan works with found footage, found image and sound material from the internet. He removes it from its recognisable context and thus creates films that consciously dispense with a narrative structure. Radan extracts visual excerpts of livestreams from private users, YouTube videos, computer games, simulators and Let’s Play feeds. He decontextualizes them and uses them as material for his filmic work.

Radan was represented in the exhibition with two video works. The animated film Prophecy of a Ridiculous Avatar (2017) was made especially for the exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein. Using minimal strokes and stop-motion technology, Radan created short sequences that he edited into an animated film. Using film and 3D animation programs, he traced scenes and figures drawn from countless private selfportraits on the Internet. In spite of digital tools, he drew each of the 25 images, which make up one second of image sequence, by hand. Radan deliberately chose this time-consuming process, where two days of work correspond to 10 seconds of film. In their absolute reduction to outlines, the figures lost all individuality. The beings acted in a contextless emptiness, their movements and actions alone tracing something primordial in humanity. Radan combined the drawings with clay fragments found online, giving the pictures a strange physicality.

The work In Between Identities (2015) was based on the Open World Game Grand Theft Auto 5, in which the artist modded the computer game, i.e. modified it by rewriting and extending the game code. Within the game world, he went in search of unimportant places and set new camera viewpoints. He extended insignificant narrative strands, digital landscapes and supporting characters in the game, and released viewers from the role of fast-paced player. Radan projected the newly generated computer images onto the wall and recorded them with an analogue camera. He created blur and zoom effects that addressed visual conventions and created emotional density. The border between analogue and digital disappeared. The viewer became a voyeur observing the physical presence of the figures, who display their digital bodies.

In both works, found visual material was arranged, creating new contexts for meaning. At a time when identity construction and simulation is increasingly taking place in digital space, Radan is looking for new forms of generating film worlds. The director becomes author of the simulation, in which the arrangement and transformation of existing audio-visual material is the character of his work.

Aleksandar Radan (*1988, Offenbach, DE) was part of the Emerging Artists Vol. 3 programme of AG Kurzfilm, with 30 screenings worldwide. Since 2010, Radan studies film and electronic art with Prof. Alexander Oppermann and Prof. Rotraut Pape at the University of Art and Design Offenbach (DE).

The artist participated in numerous film festivals, including the Vienna Shorts, International Short Film Festival, Vienna (AT), International Short Film Week, Regensburg (DE), Filmfest Dresden International Short Film Festival, Dresden (DE), the Ostrale, Rijeka (HR), the B3 Biennale of the Moving Image, Frankfurt am Main (DE), the KFFK Short Film Festival, Cologne (DE), the European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück (DE), the International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen (DE), the 38th Biennale of the Moving Image, Frankfurt am Main (DE). Festival Du Court Métrage, Clermont-Ferrand (FR), the Kassel DokFest, Kassel (DE).

Radan received the 1. Jurypreis of the KFFK Kurzfilmfestival Köln (DE) in 2019 and the award Best experimental Film of the Lago Filmfest, Lago (IT) in 2018.

Untitled, 2016
Steel, thermoplastic, silicone, plastic tub
63.50 x 111.80 x 91.40 cm

Untitled, 2016
Steel, epoxy clay, acrylic, silicone, plastic tub
63.50 x 111.80 x 91.44 cm

Untitled, 2016
Nickel plated steel, silicone, hand carved alabaster
182.90 x 63.50 x 81.30 cm

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Parisa Kind

Hannah Levy’s sculptures combine solid and synthetic materials with organic forms that evoke physicality and eroticism. Levy creates sculptures with an inherent dichotomy. She combines objects made of skin-colored silicone with highly polished metal structures, creating a strong contrast between industrial-looking structures and unidentifiable anatomical fragments.

Levy’s objects stun with their perfect execution, which neutralizes any gesture of handcraft. Metal structures with smooth, polished surfaces are carriers of biomorphic-looking objects made of rubber, latex, vinyl and polyethylene. Consistency, colour and proportion evoke organic material, fragments that could come from a living body. However, the fetish-like structures deliberately leave their origin open and refuse to be assigned to a specific category. The soft and elastic forms fit into and wrap themselves around the metal frames, yet simultaneously seem placed by chance. They are reminiscent of material relics, of preparations that could have originated in the abstraction of the laboratory and tissue engineering. Living cells or tissue samples that were taken from a body or grown in a culture medium and implanted into a structural edifice. Artificially generated biological tissue made to produce skin, or whole organs to replace defective parts in bodies.

Levy worked with quotes from the world of commodities. She replicated objects from the cosmetics industry and combined them with bodily elements. Untitled (2015) consisted of a 75-meter-long silicone chain reminiscent of an umbilical cord. Levy extended the original form so it became an infinite strand of bodily remnant spanning the exhibition space. The cord was held up by plastic moulded wall mounts that replicated the shapes of Venus Embrace razor mounts.

Despite many references, the body is never present as a whole in Levy’s work. It is the referent for which the flesh exists, and for whose optimization the utensils and synthetically produced fragments serve. Levy is interested in forms which, once removed from their actual context, negate a function. Levy creatively reclassifies them as autonomous arrangements. The sculptures stand gracefully and fragile in the room. Re-contextualized, Levy shifts the original object out of immediate recognition, but its essence remains as an irritation within the cool and elegantly designed new bodies.

Hannah Levy (*1991, New York City, US) lives and works in New York City (US). Levy studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule, Frankfurt (DE), from which she graduated in 2015 as master-class student of Prof. Peter Fischli. In 2013, she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Cornell University, New York (US). She received the DAAD Study Scholarship for Fine Arts and the Cornell Council for the Arts Grant. In 2012, she was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award by Cornell University. The artist participated in international group exhibitions in institutions such as Fondazione Coppola, Vicenza (IT), G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig (NL), Yuz Museum, Shanghai (CN), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (DK) and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (FR).

The artist had solo exhibitions in the following institutions (selection):
Casey Kaplan, New York City (US), Jeffrey Stark, New York City (US), Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin (IE), CLEARING, Brooklyn (US), Galerie Parisa Kind, Frankfurt am Main (DE), White Flag Projects Library, St. Louis (US)

David Schiesser covered the façade of the Frankfurter Kunstverein with a site-specific wall installation, which he collaged with reduced graphic drawings from the art of tattooing and photographs of tattooed bodies. The work extended from the exterior space into the entrance area of Frankfurter Kunstverein and visually introduced the exhibition.

David Schiesser’s large-format room paintings and wall interventions, his drawings on canvas and wood, and his tattoo designs are based on the visual language and motif worlds of antiquity and the Middle Ages. For his new work at Frankfurter Kunstverein, Schiesser expanded his practice from drawing to collage, combining his profound knowledge of art history and its references with the repertoire and pictorial codex of tattoo culture.

He combined photographs of bodies, on whose skin he had tattooed his figures, with drawings, which he transferred from the space of the photographic image into architectural space. The lines from the body image spread beyond, to the façade and walls of the Kunstverein, where they became autonomous wall paintings. Schiesser’s figurative depictions draw on science fiction and mythology, while at the same time quoting avant-garde masters such as Picasso, Miró or Matisse, who tested the power of the sign in its extreme reduction to line and form for its essential validity.

Schiesser draws from art history as well as from a wealth of online databases, using this repertoire of images as reference material, modifying and transferring it into a new context. He seeks the interface between art and the aesthetic codes of tattoo culture. The image carrier is human skin, on which he stitches his motifs in black and white one-line style. He finds analogies to current phenomena and investigates how they can be translated into a generally understandable visual language. His drawings, which people wear on their bodies, become permanent carriers of meaning for them. In designing them, Schiesser works through the demand to create a final image with which someone will live, but perfectionism is not the goal. His search does not strive for trendy embellishment and superficial design of the body but starts with a line that claims an aesthetic validity. It lays claim to authenticity and recognizability, demanding an individual style. For Schiesser, skin is the extension of the playing field because it is in motion, it changes and thus so does his design method for it accoridngly.

David Schiesser (*1989, Offenbach, DE) studied with Manfred Stumpf and Prof. Eike König at the University of Art and Design Offenbach (DE). In 2014, Schiesser opend a private tattoo studio in Offenbach (DE). The artist lives and works in Berlin (DE).

The artists had in the following institutions group exhibitions (selection):
Galerie Kleindienst, Leipzig (DE), Galerie Kenilworth, Milwaukee (US), Kressmann Halle, Offenbach (DE), 68, Köln (DE), Isenburger Schloss, Offenbach (DE)