Schopenhauerstrasse 5-6
Krzysztof Zieliński & Lampros Papanikolatos
Video & Photodocumentation of Ideal City - Invisible Cities in Zamość
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Albrecht Schäfer
Planspiel. Children Building Le Corbusiers
La Ville Contemporaine and Berlin Alexanderplatz, 2001/2006
Two-part poster installation
344 x 286 cm and 344 x 319 cm
Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Kamm, Berlin
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Rui Calçada Bastos
The Mirror Suitcase Man, 2004
Foreground right: The Mirror Suitcase Man #4
Lambda print, 100 x 120 cm
Background: single channel b/w video,
4:24 min, looped
Courtesy of the artist
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Melanie Smith, Spiral City, 2002
Left: Photo for Spiral City 2-I and 2-II
Gelatin silver prints, each 126.8 x 151.9 cm
Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zurich
Right: Spiral City, Video, b/w, 60 min loop
Courtesy of the artist and OMR Gallery, Mexico
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Krzysztof Zieliński
10 photos from the Hometown series, 2000-2003
C-prints, 54 x 80 cm each
Courtesy of the artist & Galeria Zderzak, Kraków
Photos: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Dan Graham, Homes for America 1966
Left: offset print
Courtesy Griffelkunst, Hamburg
Right: slide installation
Collection Dan Graham, New York
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Jonas Dahlberg, Invisible Cities, 2004
Film installation, variable dimensions
Courtesy of the artist & Nordenhake Gallery Berlin / Stockholm
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Brian O'Connell, Homes for German Sculpture, 2006
Left: Ranch 3 Times, Wood and enamel,
52.5 x 41.4 x 50.7 cm
Middle: 16 color photographs, 40.6 x 30.5 cm
Right: Cape Code, Wood and enamel,
59.5 x 21 x 20.5 cm
Courtesy of the artist & Adamski Gallery, Aachen
Photos: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Colin Ardley, Dark Limit, 2002
Wood, various papers
260 x 168 x 56 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Ola Kolehmainen
Untitled No 13, 2005
C-Print, laminated with silicone on plexi-glass
248 x 180 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Anton Vidokle
Nuevo, 2003
DVD projection (16 mm film edited in video format)
3:26 min.
Courtesy of the artist
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Francis Al˙s
Shoeshine, 2005
(Part of the video installation 'Guards')
Video, sound, 11:15 min.
In collaboration with Rafael Ortega
Commissioned by Artangel
Courtesy Lisson Gallery, London
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Guards, 2004-2005
Video, sound, 28 min.
A project by Francis Al˙s
A film by Francis Al˙s & Rafael Ortega
Commissioned by Artangel
Courtesy Lisson Gallery, London
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Carlos Garaicoa
Our Nomadic Spirit (from the series Because every
city has the right to be called Utopia), 2001
Sewing thread, pins, dim. var.
Collezione Gemma De Angelis Testa
Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
Albrecht Schäfer
Berlin Alexanderplatz / Szenario 1.3., 2001
Collection Gaby and Wilhelm Schürmann, Herzogenrath
and
Berlin Alexanderplatz / Szenario 2.3., 2001
Collection Ruth Schneider and Peter Urban
pencil, charcoal, each 70 x 100 cm
Photo: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
George Hadjimichalis
Workshop of Projects and Images in Crisis, since 1996
(Work in progress)
A hut, 277 images (at present)
203 x 538 x 290 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Photos: Krzysztof Zieliński / European Art Projects
The focus here is on works which deal with invisible cities, in the broadest sense.
Artists are still finding inspiration in Calvino's book, such as Carlos Garaicoa,
whose very title of his series of filigree, almost invisible wall drawings gives every city
the right to call itself Utopia. In Rui Calcada Bastos' video Mirror Suitcase Man
the city is invisible as a space; its image is reflected only in excerpts.
Krzysztof Zieliński's series Hometown, a photographic rumination on his native city,
does not offer a documentary report, but is rather a collection of situations
behind which the real city remains hidden. Albrecht Schaefer reconstructs
not realised designs for Alexanderplatz and George Hadjimichalis'
Workshop of Projects and Images in Crisis contains an elaborate archive,
a painterly, analytical cartography which also records the traces of cities
which have perished. Jonas Dahlberg, by contrast, finds invisible cities
far from any utopia in the faceless, unspecific medium-sized residential communities
in which the majority of the world's population lives. Back in 1966, Dan Graham
explored in a similar fashion the characteristics of interchangeable, prefabricated
suburban architecture in his slide projection Homes for America; in his view,
they contributed significantly to the development of the reduced, serial formal language
of Minimal Art. Ola Kolehmainen's large-format photographs as well as Anton Vidokle's
'popular geometries', are objective analyses of architecture and the structure
of facades and at the same time an homage to the grid. The connection between
grid and city is perhaps most striking in Melanie Smith's video Spiral City,
which draws the viewer into the sprawling grid of the megalopolis Mexico City
in a kind of ecstatic vortex. A city in which the individual gets lost,
which is growing so quickly that it can neither be mapped nor controlled,
a mega-city, certainly not an 'Ideal City', but perhaps more inspiring for artists
than any artificial paradise.
