EDITION N°2 * HEDONISTIC APOCALYPSE
12/2022
with works by Navine G. Dossos, Gregor Hildebrandt, Jonas Hoeschl, Anna Jermolaewa, Lorand Lajos, Anja Lekavski and Jol Thoms
Rosa Stern Space presents it‘s second box of new editions as a curated exhibition focusing on the topic of “HEDONISTIC APOCALYPSE”. The edition includes seven works by both established and emerging artists. The proceeds will guarantee the continued existence of our non-profit art association and enable us to continue the program at a high level in 2023. The main part will be used for the development and production of new works and exhibitions by international and local emerging artists. The edition will be set up in our exhibition space and consequently shown as part of our forthcoming program.
NAVINE G. DOSSOS
“Olympians“
2022
Double-sided Silkscreen print on archival paper
28 x 38 cm
This image is made up of several “Animal Rights and Environmental Signs and Symbols“ published in June 2019 by the Counter Terrorism Police in the UK to help Police forces to identify organised groups who might be involved in forms of political “radicalisation”. These symbols were published alongside others belonging to White Nationalist, White Supremacist, Left Wing and Associated Single Issue groups (e.g. Critical Mass, Anarcho-Queer, Anonymous and Occupy amongst others). As the War Against Terror and the Axis of Evil wane, it appears that Environmental groups demonstrating against climate and ecosystem degradation are being treated and processed though the same machinery that has been honed against Muslims over the past two decades.
Navine G. Dossos (she/her, b. 1982) is a visual artist working between London and Aegina. Her interests include Orientalism in the digital realm, geometry as information and decoration, image calibration, and Aniconism in contemporary culture. She has developed a form of geometric abstraction that merges the traditional Aniconism of Islamic art with the algorithmic nature of the interconnected world we live in. This is not the formal abstraction we understand from the western history of art, but something essentially informational, and committed to investigation and communication.
GREGOR HILDEBRANDT
“And she walks about the room“
2022
one unique pawn in each box
variable dimensions
The queens are detached from their chess game context and therefore appear as sculptures in the sense of a readymade. This edition is Gregor Hildebrandt‘s first work with queens. The queen, as the strongest figure on the chessboard, also has the maximum value (nine points). The nine white queens put number (quantity) and value (quality) on the same level: a queen beats everything. The title "And she walks about the room" is a quote from the song "Watching Alice" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Gregor Hildebrandt (*1974 in Bad Homburg). His central question is: How is it possible to visualise music? How does something become visible that I actually only hear? The choice of materials in his works provides the answer: Hildebrandt is probably one of the greatest users of analogue data mediums and found materials in contemporary art. In addition, he often uses vinyl and ready-mades in his collages and assemblages.
Gregor Hildebrandt has been a professor of painting and graphic arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich since 2015. In 2016, he was awarded the Falkenrot Prize of Künstlerhaus Bethanien. Recently, his solo exhibition "A Blink of an Eye and the Years are behind us" opened at Kunsthalle Praha and „Wo du mich liebst beginnt der Wald" at Shanghai Perrotin. Gregor Hildebrandt lives and works in Berlin since 1998.
JONAS HÖSCHL
“Hommage an Trance”
2022
lenticular printing
42 x 29.7 cm
Jonas Höschl‘s work “Hommage an Trance” is a declaration of love to the book TRANCE by Leonhard Hieronymi, as well as to the two protagonists Jana and Jochen of the ARD cult documentary “Im Techno Rausch - 60 Stunden Dauerparty” from 1995. While the camera team accompanies the young people between drinking, techno club, work, afterhour and the next rave party, Jochen gets his heart broken in the drug rush. After the apocalyptic hedonism only the stark reality remains.
Jonas Höschl (*1995, Regensburg) is a conceptual artist and photographer. For his multimedia work, he received the Bavarian Art Promotion Award and the Upper Palatinate District Culture Award for Printmaking. In addition to graphic design, Höschl studied photography with Juergen Teller at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and has been a master student of Olaf Nicolai at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich since 2020. His work has been shown at EIGEN + ART Lab, Berlin; Kunstverein Aachen; Kunstverein Baden, AT; and Kunstmuseum Bochum, among others. Most recently, he published his photo book “Fade Away Medley“ with Das Wetter (magazine for text and music) and his art book “Politics of Media Images“ with Hatje Cantz.
ANNA JERMOLAEWA
From the series “Chernobyl Safari“
2014/2021
Fine Art pigment print on Hahnemühle Fine Art Baryta
42 x 24.5 cm
Is a world without humans even thinkable? In “Chernobyl Safari” (2014/21), Anna Jermolaewa presents the fauna of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in an attempt to do just that: think the world sans human. With no one hunting or encroaching on these animals’ habitat due to the evacuation of the Zone’s human population, the local fauna has thrived despite being constantly exposed to high amounts of radiation. In fact, the area is such a haven that over four hundred species flourish there, including fifty classified as endangered. Meanwhile, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the installed game cameras hardly catch animals, but soldiers and war equipment in the Thernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Anna Jermolaewa, born in St. Petersburg, Russia, based in Vienna, is best known for her multimedia works that combine contemporary political and historical developments. Her personal experiences with totalitarian systems in combination with their analytical deconstruction form an essential and recurring component of her work. In addition to professorships and teaching positions in Karlsruhe and Kassel, she is teaching experimental design in Linz since 2018. Her works have been shown internationally in many solo and group exhibitions and have been awarded with various prizes. She is also represented in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and the MUMOK, among others.
LORAND LAJOS
“Time to Embrace X”
2022 crystals
microfiber composite, rings
variable dimensions
She must put herself first
How to please, how to curse
I know where you start, where you end
Come just a little bit closer‚ til we collide
Lorand Lajos (*1981 in Cluj, Transsylvania, Romania) is an interdisciplinary artist. As a visual artist he creates sculptures, stages installations and performances in galleries, clubs and in public space. In his work he´s questioning current perspectives on sexuality, beauty and death within their social contexts. Since 2018 he has studied at Munich´s Academy of Fine Arts with Alexandra Bir-cken. Lorand founded the artist collective LOVERS Munich as a platform for par-ties, events and safe spaces for the queer movement. His fashion brand Atelier Lorand Lajos is known for sexy club wear, accessories and iconic couture.
ANJA LEKAVSKI
“your_key_is_my_key 2.1 – 2.9“
2022
oxidated stainless steel tub
46 x 33.7 x 8 cm
The figures, reminiscent of manga, are drawings created using AI, which capture the moment figurative creation. The perpetually rusting laser engraving creates an artificial aging process that oscillates between transience and immortality. The boundaries of the virtual and the physical are broken down: Our reality, which has become abstract, takes on concrete forms. Anja Lekavski deals with the question of how a coexistence of artificial and human intelligence can function. In doing so, she tries to find out how and whether more interpersonality can be achieved through the use of emerging technologies. In the event of an apocalypse, she says, you need not only an AI whose decisions are comprehensible enough to rely on and avoid human chaos, but also good friends you can trust. Her piece for the edition is displayed dorectly on the box itself.
Anja Lekavski (*1991, Derventa, Bosnia) graduated with a B.A. in Design (2016) from the Faculty of Design at Munich University of Applied Sciences and is currently studying Fine Arts with Peter Kogler at ADBK Munich. She also works as a UX/UI designer for design studios such as International Magic, as art director of Blitz Club and for various electronic and queer music events and labels. She is a founding member of the non-entity organisation for sound “PARA”. Firmly anchored in current club culture and digital life, she moves as much in experimental music as in visual art. She creates references between the digital and analog worlds. Her visual vocabulary is rooted in pop, queer and subcultural phenomena.
JOL THOMS
“unidentified sound #1
2022
engraving on brass, sound piece (5 minutes)
17.83 x 17.83 x 0.2 cm
In contemplating natures music, in finding ears to hear it, a body to feel and dance it, a mind to celebrate and (re)think it, and - all together - a spirit to create it, I fatefully encountered this incredible “unidentified sound #1” from AWI’s PALAOA observatory in Antarctica. This strange, long, low frequency drone from somewhere in the Antarctic Ocean has an unknown origin. Is it from a creature? From water? From some geological feature? A nearby machine or ship? All that is known about the origin of this sound is that no ship was within a thousand km radius when it was recorded. What we can say for certain is that it is a subaquatic sounding of Earth, of universe, captured expertly and offered for us here to resonate with, to find resonance in the unknown of the sonosphere.
Jol Thoms (born in Toronto) is an artist and researcher living in London. His audiovisual compositions, lecture-performances and pedagogical experiments are the result of on-site field research in remote „landscape laboratories“ that are at the forefront of experimental physics and environmental and environmentalism, where planetary bodies become giant posthuman sensor arrays. Thoms was a participant in “Anthropocene Campus” I & II at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and won MERU Art*Science Award (2016), among others. He received his PhD from the University of Westminster and is a Studio Lecturer in the MA Art & Ecology at Goldsmiths. Thom‘s work has been, among other things, shown in the 23rd Triennale de Milano, Blind Faith, Haus der Kunst, Munich; Open Codes: Life in digital worlds - ZKM, Karlsruhe.
