Grotto
Städelschule Absolventen Austellung, Frankfurt am Main
2023
New Urban Single
2023
Slate Grey powder coat, steel, gas pistons, birch plywood slats, mattress, plastic
150x200x80cm
Untitled (The Placemakers Parts 6 - 7)
2023 - Ongoing
Analogue silver gelatine prints on resin coated paper
33 x 49.5 cm
Installation View at Grotto, Danziger Platz 12, Frankfurt am Main, DE.
Photo Credit: Ian Waelder
New Urban Single
2023
Slate Grey powder coat, steel, gas pistons, birch plywood slats, mattress, plastic
150x200x80cm
Untitled (The Placemakers Parts 6 - 7)
2023 - Ongoing
Analogue silver gelatine prints on resin coated paper
33 x 49.5 cm
Installation View at Grotto, Danziger Platz 12, Frankfurt am Main, DE.
Photo Credit: Ian Waelder
Untitled (The Placemakers Parts 1 - 5)
2023 - Ongoing
Analogue silver gelatine prints on resin coated paper
33 x 49.5 cm
Installation View at Grotto, Danziger Platz 12, Frankfurt am Main, DE.
Photo Credit: Ian Waelder
New Urban Single
2023
Slate Grey powder coat, steel, gas pistons, birch plywood slats, mattress, plastic
150x200x80cm
Untitled (The Placemakers Parts 6 - 7)
2023 - Ongoing
Analogue silver gelatine prints on resin coated paper
33 x 49.5 cm
Installation View at Grotto, Danziger Platz 12, Frankfurt am Main, DE.
New Urban Single consists of a sculpture of a folding wall-bed that stands freely in the room. Half-open and half-closed, the object takes up space rather than saving it. This wall-bed design gained popularity in the late 19th century as a space-saving solution for small city apartments. It became infamous in early silent cinema as a comic prop that would snap shut and trap the protagonist;
a comic gag aimed at the perils of modernity. It has remerged as a popular choice in contemporary housing models, most notably as the central apparatus of the “micro” apartment,
which offers minimum space in exchange for maximum convenience for the modern working subject.
New Urban Single is based on an amalgam of folding wall-bed designs and has been painted in Slate Grey a colour that has become synonymous with redevelopment projects, earning the moniker - “gentrification grey”. The sculpture could be mistaken as a mass produced object, however it is unique and hand-made, it stands awkwardly in the space - a jammed prop in a misplaced gag.
Untitled (The Placemakers Parts 1 - 5)
2023 - Ongoing
Analogue silver gelatine prints on resin coated paper
33 x 49.5 cm
Installation View at Grotto, Danziger Platz 12, Frankfurt am Main, DE.
Photo Credit: Ian Waelder
Untitled (The Placemakers Parts 1 - 5)
2023 - Ongoing
Analogue silver gelatine prints on resin coated paper
33 x 49.5 cm
Installation View at Grotto, Danziger Platz 12, Frankfurt am Main, DE.
Photo Credit: Ian Waelder
Untitled (The Placemakers) is an ongoing series of analogue black and white photographs. Shot in Dublin, Ireland and Frankfurt, Germany, the series draws upon photography’s historical relationship to the city and the “street scene”. The images are made by photographing large scale billboards that advertise new housing developments using composite architectural impressions. Small sections and details of these advertisements are photographed up-close and enlarged in the darkroom.
The images present candid street shots, tightly framed portraits and scenes of leisure and recreation. Painterly compositions of figures in the park appear flat and littered with the trashy artefacts of digital alteration. The ambiguity of their temporal, spatial and material characteristics accumulates through viewing as the images continually affirm, undermine or contradict each other with the resultant images appearing at the same time familiar and generic. Understood as a specific visual economy these images are active agents in the production of the city - a space that is produced not
only geographically but also in the social imagination and through changing modes of representation.