hobnob #1 - Curtain up!

Theatre tradition: at the beginning of a performance, every audience is in front of a closed curtain. Josephin Hanke's installation raises the question of the direction of the view. Screening? Or the promise: something is about to happen here. A light installation by Benjamin Althammer simultaneously claims with temporal and dramatic anticipation: At the end there will be suffering. But at the end of what?

With these settings - sculptural curtain, reference to a dramatic course - Althammer and Hanke locate the audience on the street and simultaneously frame the work of their colleagues. In the second state of the exhibition, when the curtain is opened, the inclusion of the audience will continue in the drawing installation by Kristin Albrecht. The objects and paintings by Nils Vogt defy anticipatory interpretations. Kristin Albrecht, Benjamin Althammer, Josephin Hanke and Nils Vogt were united by their joint studies at weißensee kunsthochschule berlin until a few years ago. Now they are coming together again to test the viability of this connection.

The exhibition hobnob #1 will be shown in several states: At the first vernissage, the curtain will take centre stage as a sculpture; at the second, it will be raised. There will also be a third state.  

The Kunstraum FUGE is run in its third year by artspring in cooperation with the Heinrich- Böll-Bibliothek. For 2023, the artist Patricia Lambertus is the curator of the exhibition programme. She invites artists from Pankow to the dialogue-based exhibition series hobnob, which includes six different exhibitions.

hobnob colloquially means to meet, hang out and spend time together - in other words, a classic meet & greet. People meet for an arranged occasion to have personal conversations, to network or simply to have fun. Targeted appointments mix with chance encounters here. The FUGE art space is located in the middle of an urban hustle and bustle of constantly changing situations. The rhythm of the day pulsates differently from the rhythm of the night. The weekly market meets the public of the library and the neighbourhood. In contrast to the outwardly austere architecture, everything here is in flow and change, is in motion and thus has an unpredictable, anarchic logic. The clash of different realities and intentions will be reflected in the exhibition series hobnob.

The shop window will become an experimental, anarchic meeting place for diverse artistic positions. Two to four artists at a time will be invited to work together in the shop window, and they can also extend further invitations. It is like a rendez-vous, a dialogue in a confined space and with an uncertain outcome.  

As a visual artist, Patricia Lambertus works primarily with site-specific spatial installations. By means of arrangements in surprising architecture, she creates panoramas that incorporate a wide variety of artistic epochs and political topicalities. In her curatorial work, she transfers this principle to her exhibition practice and that of her colleagues.