13.5.–11.6.05

The opening exhibition is entitled ‹Hits and Misses›; works from the Swiss artist Dominik Stauch and the Paris based Brigitte Zieger can be seen. Both operate at the interface beauty/brittleness and craft/technique. The exhibitions title is a program they adhere to: Once one succeeds, then again a flop happens; then again the flop is the success, in the long term. For both the explorative field is the obscure thicket of the expanded ‹Show business›. Film, literature, fashion and rock music become interwoven, genres mixed or ‹remixed›. Like this the title allows several interpretations. Dominik Stauch shows his newest studies concerning the Fibonacci sequence and a quadronomial colour/sound/ video composition. The Fibonacci sequence (0,1,1,2,3,5…) belongs to the best-known mathematical items. The addition of the two preceding numbers makes the sum of the next number. Now the artist has applied the numerical proportion on several geometric arrangements. At some of them, one detects the system at first sigh, but at other ones more observation time is needed for breaking the code. Occurred are astonishing works, irritating and attracting at the same time. His four requiem movements base on aleatoric techniques of composition. With “Head or tail dices” he successively combines colour and sounds. Like this four completely random and yet different musical and visual sequences appeared. The work is presented as an installation with four lettered chairs. To Four old masters of abstraction he always dedicated one of the unconventional pieces.

At the centre of Brigitte Ziegers video and photo works stands the relation of fiction and reality, as well in the actual exhibition. Stuntmen/resp. stuntwomen always take the actors place, when

It gets risky and dangerous. Brigitte Zieger has hired a stuntman, to partake in her newest production. He falls through floors or fights against crumbling walls – dressed as the artists ‹Alter Ego›. She herself can many a time be seen on videos and photographies and contribute in such a way to a constant deferral of perception. For another work she reproduced the corridor with the famous carpet from Kubrick’s ‹Shining› as a model. Through a spy hole, you can see into the amazingly reproduced universe of the horror flick. At the doors, you can read the name of the artist, which is hacked with an ax. ‹Bbbbbbbbrrrrrrrr› is therefore a homage to two artists (Kubrick und Naumann), who decisively influenced the development of the visual in the 20th century.

Bernhard Bischoff, May 2005