Exhibition
The photo and music installation Black Box unites Sven Marquardt’s images and Marcel Dettmann’s sound.
Born in East Berlin Sven Marquardt was a defining part of the emerging Punk, New Wave and arts scene in the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood from the mid 1980s. With the fall of the Berlin Wall he halted his work as a photographer and immersed himself in the reunited city’s rising night club scene. The subject-matter of ‘Night’ left a strong impression on Marquardt since the end of the 90s due to his work as a doorman at the Ostgut club. Marquardt has been working on the door of Berghain since 2004.
Marquardt’s work combines formal severity and clear imagery with bleak impermanence, impresses through interaction of ease, severity and the dramatic art of monochrome contrasting. The ever changing metropolis of Berlin has shaped Marquardt’s sensibility for striking characters, his sense for the unusual in humanity and his artistic subject.
Marquardt’s body of work has stood the test of time of major societal and cultural changes. His photography seems classic, the underlying contents of his images merge past, present and future. There are echoes of transformation and reformation in his work, as in one of mankind’s oldest symbols of the snake shedding its skin. The imagery plays with ideas of transforming creatures and takes on different appearances; in other words: there’s more than meets the eye.
DJ and producer Marcel Dettmann is recognised as one of the most influential proponents of contemporary Techno. Widely associated with iconic places – Berlin, Berghain and Hard Wax – Dettmann stays true to his roots by consistently innovating his interpretation of electronic music, integrating art with the scene.
The exhibition will be opened on Friday, October 27 at the African Artists'' Foundation. Sven Marquardt will be present.
On Saturday, October 28th, an artists' talk with Sven Marquardt and the Nigerian-German musician Ade Bantu will take place at 2pm.
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