After Images

Matta-Clark, at the gallery’s space in Mercator Höfe. Curated by David Hartt, the exhibition engages with critical histories of and experimental approaches to urban space, from a period defined by sweeping transformations that continue to structure the built environment today.</p><p>With an added suggestion of something that no longer is, (Ex)Urban Futures of the Recent Past is a slight modification of the subtitle of the book Megastructure (1976)by Reyner Banham. Banham’s book is a critique of the megastructural movement, the strategies of which were assumed by and gave way to the capitalist restructuration and private development of the 1970s. It refers to a fleeting moment of optimism around the utopian potential of large-scale urban initiatives, in contrast to which Matta-Clark’s more fragmentary approach to city reinvention took shape – as both responded to urban infrastructural decline.&nbsp;</p><p>The black-and-white photographs from Matta-Clark’s series Walls (1972)installed throughout the exhibition are marked by the economic collapse and severe urban decay of the time, depicting abandoned buildings in the South Bronx. In cropped, straight-forward views of wall segments, layers peel back and internal structures are broken down and laid bare. They refer to exposure, or to being exposed: from the demolition process to the camera that preserves this state while underscoring its ephemerality. Their cracked surfaces are split into sections by columns or framed by remnants of decorative moldings that recall floor plans at times, while drifting into abstract stratification at others. The aesthetic of decay is experienced as a process of fading, as well as encroachment. Even though seemingly emptied out, human presence can still be felt: in one photograph, the shape of a void left by a break in a window is vaguely reminiscent of a silhouette.</p><p>Enlivened by human activity and movement, Matta-Clark’s films are projected onto drywall constructions that both partition and open up the space through large mirrors attached to their reverse sides. In one film, Automation House (1972), Matta-Clark’s own use of mirrors alters the perception, functionality and understanding of a space – undoing its architectural logic and coherence. Bodies are fragmented or vanish past the edge of an invisible boundary, reemerging on screen in seemingly impossible continuities that make everyday navigations and cohabitations more difficult to decipher. Framings through windows and doors, along with interactions of shadows and reflections, further destabilize the space – its comings and goings, ins and outs, and the relationships within it, including those between bodies and their movements.</p><p><br></p>" />

Ayoung Kim</a>’s (b. 1979 in Seoul, Korea) first solo exhibition in a German museum spans over the past five years of her artistic practice.</p><p>Using Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, video, game simulations, sculpture, and sonic fiction, Ayoung Kim creates expansive fictional universes with their own temporal and spatial laws. Her works are often linked together by speculative narratives that are still connected to the actual world that we live in and the viewers themselves are transformed into spectators as well as first person players, controlling the narrative from their own point of view.</p><p>Her subjects are humans, characters, mythological beings and virtual entities who cross the boundaries between different possible realities, making possible and impossible worlds collide across different times and spaces. Ayoung Kim’s exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof explores themes like migration, xenophobia, queerness, and geopolitics and looks closely at the symbiosis between data, humans, and the planet.</p><p><br></p>" />