Albrecht Schäfer

"Großkugel"


Preview Friday 29th August 2003, 7pm - 9pm
Exhibition 30th August – 11th October, 2003
Öffnungszeiten Wed Fri 1pm - 7pm, Sat 1pm - 6pm




Galerie Kamm is pleased to present Albrecht Schäfer’s second solo show in the gallery. The exhibition “Großkugel” refers thematically to the project “3 Cities” that Albrecht Schäfer developed with the artist Sybil Kohl and the architect Phillip Oswalt which was shown in part in the gallery, and in the Badischen Kunstverein , and in May, in all three parts, in the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf.
While “3 Cities” was concerned with city-development in East Germany after the wall, Albrecht Schäfer’s new work concentrates on a single place – Großkugel. With large-format drawings and a video Albrecht Schäfer reflects the almost surreal atmosphere of a wished for but still withstanding commercial boom, which makes the real place seem like a fiction.

“In the early years after the wall everybody was agreed: the excellently situated industrial-area between Leipzig and Halle would boom. Billions were invested; also in Großkugel, a small town lying a few kilometers behind the motorway exit with the same name. Almost a thousand flats were built and a large industrial estate was developed. For years everything has been ready: the industrial area and still a third of the apartments could be rented out tomorrow, the newly built marketplace with its empty stalls is kept in good order and the streetlamps on the unused parking areas surrounded by wheat-fields set the night aglow – but the boom is still waiting to happen.
Since the whole town was built for this fictive boom, it appears unreal, like the scenery for a play that won’t be performed. In Großkugel there is an orderly stillness that only superficially covers the economic disaster of one of the largest private investments in the new federation.” Albrecht Schäfer.


Please contact the gallery for further information.