The “friendly patterns” exhibition arose in close dialog with the two artists Flo Maak and Sascha Pohle and largely presents new works. The formally different pieces share in common the friendly superimposed patterns referred to in the title. While patterns is used in common parlance to refer to something decorative, the works in the exhibition are the results of a performative exploration using mimicry to imitate and simulate familiar forms – and thus the result of acts of appropriation and re-interpretation.
For Ornaments of Property Sascha Pohle arranged hundreds of reject DVD and CD computer drives, the relics of a dying mnemonic and reproduction technology to create fictitious, ruin-liked architectural fragments kindling associations with different ages, cultures and worlds. The objects in Flo Maak’s photo series Gravity likewise bring to mind past ages when the development of technology was pegged directly to human progress. Mainly he has gathered together plumb lines, old measuring tools consisting of a weight on a line, that Maak photographically stages against the background of the modern space revolution as flying objects.
Sascha Pohle’s Passage also intervene directly in the space. Knitted wools with abstract patterns that are based on digital shots of different asphalt and concrete floors are translated into soft and mobile terrain that are constantly being re-folded and arranged for the course of the exhibition. In String Stories Flo Maak addresses natural patterns and presents in part destroyed webs of the golden silk spider that is widespread in Korea. Maak photographed them in front of colored backgrounds and using artificial light, thus rendering the fine threads visible. The title forges a link to archaic games in which a thread was spun with the finders of at least two hands to create figures that often imitated nature. In this context, Sascha Pohle’s video film After the Gift - Blossfeldt’s Fan revisits the interaction of structures between humans and nature.
On view are different woven fans waving in slow motion to turn book pages showing Karl Blossfeldt’s photographs of buds, blossoms and seeds, a mimetic game with shapes, colors and the patterns of plants and fans that is constantly being kept in motion by the invisible element of wind. As alluded to in the title, After the Gift - Blossfeldt’s Fan points to a gift having a second lease of life and to the related relationships that like those in String Stories depend on cohabitation and transformation.