„Wie die Linien einer Hand, geschrieben in die Straßenränder“ is the title of the new exhibition by 7 artists from the artist collective Pilote: Betty Böhm, Selket Chlupka, Dana Engfer, Catherine Rose Evans, Kathrin Ganser, Claire Laude, and Sarah Straßmann.
The title is borrowed from Italo Calvino’s book „The Invisible Cities“ and places the topic of the city, urban space, landscape and space in the broadest sense at the center of their discussions. As with Calvino, this is about the different perspectives and perceptions of inner and outer images, spatial perception, poetic space and their many interdependencies. Calvino uses enigmatic metaphors that are both described and realistic, and that question our relationship to our environment.
The lines of a hand, written in an undefined space, refer to the processual in what is happening, to a present that has already passed. The artists examine traces of the visible as well as the invisible in different ways and in their chosen affinities. The artists are concerned with making things visible as well as exploring the relationships and ambivalences of our present.
The location of the exhibition, the history of Villa Heike will reverberate here, as will rooms that are reflected in the wider environment of digital space, human inscriptions, perhaps also wounds, in our environment, inner and outer spaces.
The experience and perception of ambivalence is particularly expressed in the dualisms of natural and artificial. With their works, the artists refer to the spaces between these opposites.
Using a variety of media, including photography, drawing, video and installation, they combine the metaphor and complexity of spatial perception and (urban) landscape, the inscribed traces and their memory fragments.
(Press release ©Kathrin Ganser, 2023)