Exhibitions

In Gregor Hildebrandt’s first solo exhibition at LOHAUS GALLERY, the ambiguity of his art transformed into music resonates throughout. The title Ein Raum mit zwei Türen (A Room with Two Doors), as if sung by Blixa Bargeld, initially describes the physical gallery space while simultaneously becoming a metaphor: two directions, two decisions, a place in between that points beyond the visible—an elsewhere, another possibility.

Gregor Hildebrandt transforms the space into a place between sound and silence, memory and transience. Once the decision has been made as to which door one enters the room through, one is immersed in the silent sound of the works. Magnetic tape in its characteristic black-brown hues stretches across every wall of the room. Once a carrier of music and voices, it becomes visual material here. Its sound remains invisible and inaudible, yet is stored within it as memory. The works move between presence and absence: what was recorded is no longer directly accessible, yet remains inscribed.

At the centre of the exhibition are the two large-format works Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind (Where Have All the Flowers Gone) and Über Gräbern weht der Wind (The Wind Blows over Graves). They refer to Marlene Dietrich’s anti-war song, which became an anthem of pacifism. Composed of black and white tape, the works are conceived as positive and negative. Flowers and graves form the beginning and end of the same cycle. The flowers stand for beauty and transience, but also for memory and loss—themes that Marlene Dietrich sings about so hauntingly in her famous song. The question of what remains and what disappears runs through the entire space.

Marlene Dietrich herself is present in one of Gregor Hildebrandt’s unmistakable cassette display cases. Her portrait appears within it both fragmented and preserved. The work becomes a repository in which memory, transience and beauty are interconnected.

In Ein Raum mit zwei Türen, the seemingly silent material becomes a resonating body. The music cannot be heard, yet it is present within the works. Images become spaces of memory, surfaces become carriers of voices from the past. Between the two doors, a space opens up in which the absent remains present.

With Domestication of a Pyramid, LOHAUS SOMINSKY presents the second solo exhibition of the Czech sculptor and conceptual artist Magdalena Jetelová. At its center stands the pyramid motif, a defining element of her oeuvre. A monumental sand pyramid rises in one corner of the gallery space, from which the famous torso of Laocoön emerges. By inserting site-specific pyramids into interior spaces, Jetelová questions the claim to represent and preserve history—showing instead how history is selectively displayed, cultivated, or “domesticated.”

With her Domestication of Pyramids (1992–1995), Jetelová created a striking and politically charged body of work that has been realized in numerous museums. She transforms the monumental form of the pyramid into a confined interior setting, thereby challenging the mechanisms of cultural mediation as well as Western perceptions of history, space, and time.

Early drawings reveal that Jetelová was already engaged with this theme at the time of her participation in Documenta in 1987, when she first began developing her ideas around the pyramid. This motif runs like a red thread throughout her practice: time and again, she returns to the culturally charged and cross-cultural symbol of the pyramid, realizing it as an encounter of two architectural timescales in major museum exhibitions. These include the three-story pyramid created for the MAK in Vienna (1992); the Kunsthalle Hamburg (1985); Pyramide (Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, 1987); The Pyramid Project (Frankfurt am Main, 1990); Pyramids (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1992); and Domesticated Monuments (Prague, 1994), to name but a few. The exhibition thus makes visible both the historical origins and the enduring relevance of the pyramid motif within Jetelová’s artistic production.

In addition, the exhibition highlights Jetelová’s fundamental exploration of space and energy in the broadest sense. Since the 1980s she has produced large-scale works using fire, light, and laser projections. On view are early lightboxes from her Iceland Project (1992) as well as her monumental pyrotechnic drawings on canvas.

Magdalena Jetelová (*1946 in Semily, Czech Republic) is an internationally renowned sculptor, conceptual, and installation artist. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. In 1985 she emigrated to Germany. From 1990 to 2004 she was professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and from 2004 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Jetelová’s works are held in major collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Kunsthalle, Hamburg; and the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, among others.

Exhibitions

Ein Raum mit zwei Türen

SUMMER: SUR REAL REAL

FUTURE ANCESTORS / SILENT MATTER

Matthias Bitzer - An Atom Drip From Your Lip

WHERE AT HOME

Vera Molnar and Harm Van Den Dorpel - 1% of Disorder

Melanie Siegel - Environmental Thoughts

Sarah Zagefka - Favorites

Charlie Stein - Almost Human

PHOEBE DERLEE - ALIVE

Magdalena Jetelová - DOMESTICATION OF A PYRAMID

Vera Molnar - IMAGINARY MACHINE

IM PORTRAIT

Melanie Siegel - ELSEWHERE

VERBAL NON VERBAL

Janina Roider - JAYE ROYE

Harm van den Dorpel and Vera Molnár - ANGLES MORTS

Johanna Calle - LINEAL

Melanie Siegel, Sarah Zagefka, Karin Kneffel

Hannes Heinrich - EVEN DEMONS HAVE DEMONS

LE SALON DE MUSIQUE curated by STEPHAN EICHER

Juergen Staack - ABERRATION EROSION V1S10N

MAGDALENA JETELOVÁ

Harm van den Dorpel, Liliana Porter, Janina Roider

Johanna Calle, Jieun Park, José Vera Matos

Ilit Azoulay - QUEENDOM

LAST CALL / FIRST CALL curated by Karin Kneffel

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