Kunst Aus London

Pool

To mark the 300th anniversary of the personal union of Great Britain and Hanover, the kestnergesellschaft is showing contemporary art from London. The group exhibition ‘Pool’ brings together works by Aaron Angell, Alice Channer, Nicolas Deshayes, Magali Reus and Cally Spooner in five interlocking individual presentations.

This ‘pool’ of young artists of international origin living in London exhibits numerous overlaps, both in terms of content and the use of materials. Deshayes and Reus use traditional sculptural methods and combine them with highly specialised production processes, while Spooner works primarily with language and performance. Channer creates installations with long lengths of fabric and Angell utilises reverse glass painting or draws on ceramic techniques.

The artists belong to the currently much-discussed generation that has grown up in the digital age and whose work reacts to the influences and changes associated with it. Against this backdrop, the works presented renegotiate typical sculptural questions about the relationship between body, material and space in different ways: Where is the human place today? What shapes our environment? How do we relate to the things that surround us? Where are the possibilities for action and expression?

The artists' material language is characterised by a fascination for the changeable and fleeting, for transformation processes and changing aggregate states. Recurring motifs of liquid and water reflect a reality in which the static dissolves, things are permanently changeable and become intangible. It is a world in which boundaries are blurred and the relationship between people and the environment, between the private and public spheres is constantly being redefined. Experiences of growing abstraction, intangibility and alienation become visible. The works created for ‘Pool’, some of which are new, take into account the special exhibition situation of the kestnergesellschaft in the halls of the former Goseriede swimming pool.

The exhibition opens with Aaron Angell's Gallery Peacetime: an aquarium inhabited by three axolotls, in which the artist will curate four small solo exhibitions of young artists from London. Allison Katz (1980), Esme Toler (1989), Isabel Mallet (*1989) and Aaron Angell himself will be presented.