'Beauty is a Black Horse' is a quote that hints to the miraculous childhood time, where Black Beauty was the admirable horse of a US TV series that brings the dream of freedom. In another situation the black horse that renders itself against the horizon is a threat to children hiding in the shed as the hunter is seeking for them ('The Night of the Hunter'). Both man and animal is the particular and strange horse that appears in Jean Cocteau’s movie 'Testament d’Orphée'. It is the link to the underworld and tempts Orpheus away from his life of a poet.
This black horse, which we borrow from Cocteau, is about the journey; where it appears, it asks about what it means and where it may lead.
For the Black Horses Exhibition Series 17/18 we invited architects and artists to contribute to the speculation with the given situation at Triftstraße 19A. We have chosen individuals, that we hoped would critically and in an experimental way investigate and suggest new perspectives towards the space.
The produced work shows how diverse the reaction is; there has been a participatory project, which activated the square outside the storefront, proposing a levelled platform on the sloped asphalt. Here the project space became a pathway to store tools and materials, but also to seek shelter from the rain and share meals together. For one night the square, which usually passed by on the way home, was transformed into a place to stop and meet people.
There have been projects that worked intimately with the space and its interior relationships. Sometimes focusing on the light, sometimes on texture, sometimes introducing new devices for reflecting relationships. These worked through photography, mapping and drawing and inhabited the space directly in different ways. Either by literally seeking a way to be in the space, folded and floating, either by in a subtle way expanding into the space through the notion of a three dimensional tile or by becoming a full scale wall drawing.
Other projects made a spatial intervention that changed the perspective towards the space by questioning scale or introducing new ways of moving through the space, offering unexpected views both inside the space or from the outside.
The project space has proven a lot of potential through its layering of rooms and levels from the street to the storefront, the interior gallery rooms to the half level workshop space.
Charlotte Erckrath is trained as an architect and has practiced for many years in the education of architects, working conceptually in design studio and teaching explorative design methods. Her personal practice is strongly related to her teaching interest, which is drawing from references of the fields of art and literature as well as architecture theory and philosophy while being thoroughly based in the production through making and drawing. Charlotte currently holds a position of an assistant professor at the Bergen Architecture School, Norway in the field of DAV (The Other View).
Maik Ronz is trained as an architect and urban planner and has participated at various competitions, group exhibitions and projects throughout Europe. He works as artist and educator and collaborates with the artist Martin Kaltwasser on a number of participatory projects in urban space.
Text auf Deutsch
The Black Horses Exhibition Series 17/18 was curated by Charlotte Erckrath/ Maik Ronz and funded by Kunststiftung Sachsen-Anhalt.
