Get Well Soon / Kunsthaus Nürnberg, Nuremberg

Get Well Soon / curated by Ellen Wagner

AIDS 3D, Kai Altmann, Llyn Foulkes, Stanya Kahns, Daniel Kiss, Linda Weiß, Benjamin Zuber

7 December 2019 - 16 February 2020

Kunsthaus im KunstKulturQuartier
Königstraße 93, 90402 Nürnberg
Germany

Photography by Annette Kradisch



























































The exhibition “Get well soon” deals with current ideas about recuperation and health from various artistic perspectives. Among other things, it examines the process of rebuilding harmony bet- ween body and mind as well as between nature and technology. The exhibition communicates an ambiguous picture spanning the place of well-being and a traumatic event. Works are collected together that deal with the recuperation of the human body as well as others forming a bridge to the healing of the ecosystem or society as a whole.

The central motif of the exhibition is water: symbolic of a wealth of resources as well as spiritual purification. The work of the artist duo AIDS-3D consists of indoor fountains, in whose cavities mini-computers operate. Via an app, these connect to the “World Community Grid” – a project supported by the IBM computer group, which makes redundant computing power available for non-profitable medical research. In this way, the work also addresses the significance that art may have as a decorative object and / or social tool. 


While this piece focuses on the contribution made by technology and the digital to health and social life, so-called digital detox programs propagate a cleansing from the everyday use of digital media. Linda Weiß’ installation “Einladung zum Stören” (Invitation to Disturb) deals with concepts of regeneration through time spent in natural settings, especially in forests. In addition, her hybrid landscape plays, metaphorically, with the situation in which “our batteries are empty”. 


Kari (Kai) Altmann uses different languages from our everyday surroundings und picks up images of natural phenomena, which often reflect a certain idea of the relationship between human and nature. Spiritual and scientific sources, ambiguous codes, reminiscent of branding strategies and social network communication, join to form a kind of “new script” for a “psychogeographic flexibility” by means of which we adjust and react to a constantly changing environment. 


Daniel Kiss also deals with the field of tension between self- development and social adaptation through the optimization of mental and physical fitness by exploring places that are supposed to aid healing. Kiss‘ works oscillate between fascination and dis- comfort in relation to an aesthetic design that purports to “do you good” but at the same time conveys very specific ideas of a life in harmonious work-life balance and, indirectly, serves commercial interests. 


A slightly different focus on regenerative settings can be found in Benjamin Zuber’s work. Building on his own experiences after an accident, the artist pursues the aestheticizing of recovery processes, which are inevitably connected to their opposite, those of disease. Here, medical aids and digital camera technology com- bine to create fragile sculptures and raise questions about our sensory experience in hospital environments.

Stanya Kahn’s tragicomic videos oscillate between fiction and documentation, staging and improvisation. Her work “Happy Song for You” (with Llyn Foulkes) is a surreal music video with powerful language and images, appearing simultaneously fragile and uncanny.

The exhibition “Get well soon” was curated by Ellen Wagner. The Kunsthaus has thus once again invited a guest curator to provide a space for current artistic positions located at the interface between contemporary international art and social reflection.