Open Air Distance Exhibition - OADE Volume I

In an open time KVTV holds the flag of art high and finds new open spaces. The restrictions of public life and the uncertain future challenge the creative potential, they hold chances for paths and niches away from the well-worn cultural business.   In order to continue to exhibit art and make it tangible, the OADE project has settled in an abandoned allotment garden in its first phase. The garden belongs to no one, it belongs to everyone. The old huts are destroyed, wind, weather and plants overgrow them. Within the framework of the OADE project, this merging of culture and nature becomes a Green Cube, creating a semi-public space for art. The allotment garden becomes an off-space, which, apart from the total digitalisation of culture, makes it possible to keep distance not only to other people but also to the old cultural industry.   For the first OADE exhibition, the artists Giulietta Ockenfuß and Alya Pierrot Arendt created works that reflect on the garden as a place of culture. Their artworks question the position of a human being in nature and highlight the dialectic of transience and duration as a common element of nature and culture. The works Bach by Arendt and Naturgestalt by Ockenfuß are artistic interventions that make visible human’s embeddedness in nature and make it possible to think about and experience a new relationship between human and nature. In times of restructuring normality, the will to move forward and not to fall back into the bad old is inherent in them.  

Ayla Pierrot Arendt

17.4.2020

I´m sitting alone in the garden at the water park. I don't want to leave any marks yet, just the date. I was here.

26.4.2020

In the garden. The stream runs, the fire burns. Holy place, this garden, place in the void. The water takes its course, like time. Sisyphus, when it seeps away. Waste, if it runs easy. I take the work and watch the place as a window of time, as a moment that just burns away.

30.4.2020

I want to create testimonies, lay a trail, draw what I have observed and mark the way into the performance.

Giulietta Ockenfuß For the two paintings Naturgestalt I and Naturgestalt II Ockenfuß chose the wall of a demolished garden hut and a large wooden panel. She found these in the garden and made them into canvases. The staggered structure of the old wall and the traces that rain and time have left on the wooden board still shine through under the light chalk and lacquer colours of the paintings. They bear witness to the past world of the allotment garden as well as to the weathering that wood undergoes over time and can be seen wherever artefacts are exposed to the weather for long periods of time. For this reason, Ockenfuß has created two complementary natural forms that are clearly visible without completely stepping out of the material and the garden. The contours of the faces and the bodies are clearly visible, yet remain hidden in the scenery of the Green Cube. They are natural figures who say "man" without allowing themselves to be fixed on a finished form. They indicate the light and open, the glaring and possible of human existence as well as the compulsion and work of the individual to constantly assert his limits.

Artist biographies:

Ayla Pierrot Arendt studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, then at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen. Ayla Pierrot Arendt combines video and live performance with installation, follows with OCTOPUSSY on TOUR invitations between concert venue and Kunstverein, and thus traces the network of relationships that results from her experiences, which are directly related to the place. Arendt lives and works in Frankfurt a.M.

Giulietta Ockenfuß completed her studies in 2010 at the Academy of Art Düsseldorf with Rita Mc Bride and Tal R. After her studies, Ockenfuß temporarily turned away from painting and shifted the focus of her work towards anti-institutional actionism. This ambivalent relationship to objects led to ephemeral works, such as her performances with the band Die Römischen Votzen. Her return to painting found its expression on the bonnets of cars, as well as in collaborative glass works with Sonja Yakovleva. Ockenfuß lives and works in Frankfurt a.M.

Photos: Anton Sahler

Curated by KVTV