Devening Projects + Editions

devening projects + editions is very pleased to present The Hidden, a group exhibition featuring the work of 17 artists associated with the Düsseldorf gallery dok25a. dok25a is a project established in 2008 and is directed by Tabea Langenkamp and Andreas Schön. dok25a features installations by emerging and established international artists. The Hidden takes as a starting point the relationship between material/physical presence and the content layered beneath.

The Hidden will feature an installation with work by Wilhelm Mundt, Elke Nebel, Driss Ouadahi, Jan Scharrelmann, Andreas Schön, Kata Unger. In addition, the exhibition will include a selection of works on paper by Stefan Ettlinger, Andreas Fischer, Tobias Hantmann, Lucy Harvey, Katja Pfeiffer, Felix Schramm, Nicola Schrudde, Martin Schwenk, Bianca Voss, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg and Constantin Wallhäuser.

THE HIDDEN; some remarks by Andreas Schön

There are things that are obvious, it seems.
A rose is a rose is a rose, as it was said before.
But what is a rose? How can we know?
That appears to be a simple question
and is a fairly difficult one at the same time.
Roses have many aspects, they consist of color, structure, smell, sound perhaps.
That happens with “pieces of art”,
man-made stuff of no precise function in everyday life, in a similar manner.
What you see is not necessarily what you get.
Entering an exhibition we stumble into various objects
that represent this or that or nothing and may touch us or not.
Getting closer, it happens that a certain uncertainty comes up.
We may discover that something shown in a painting or a photo
turns out to be dealing about something completely different.
For good luck we were taught not to handle Titians “Venus of Urbino”
as a picture about sex in old fashioned rooms,
as Mark Twain once did in a relentless description of moral disgust.
Warhol’s Brillo Boxes are not really about how to wash clothes.

There are layers beneath the surface.
There is something hidden.

In everyday life we are surrounded by the hidden in our civilized societies.
Hidden stories in the families and nations,
hidden fools in their asylums,
thieves and murderers in the jails, sometimes innocent,
hidden trash and money in the deposits.
Things and beings taken away from our eyes deliberately.

Then there are the hidden secrets in the temples,
the treasures hidden in the earth, fish in the sea, deer in the forest,
hidden messages when the birds sing in the sky.
That makes us curious and needy to know.
This is the hidden we would like to gain,
the secret we would like to unveil.

Wilhelm Mundt’s partly huge meteor-like ojects wear their name
“Trashstone” for a good reason.
Their shimmering lacquered skins contain: trash.
Mostly relics of his studio-work, consisting of chemical dust, tapes etc..
Elke Nebel’s painted films and ink-paintings
show figures and their metamorphosis, but deal about longing, loneliness, soul.
Driss Ouadahi’s paintings present beautiful compositions,
deriving from his expeditions into the suburbs and social projects around Paris.

The work of an artist is some kind of expedition into things
that happen under his hands, a journey into the unknown.
The viewer may participate and get a touch of the hidden.