22.10-26.10.2019 – UmStand der Dinge – A State of Affairs

Let’s play. Lass uns spielen. Let us pretend. Let’s invent a set of terms and then let us believe in the terms we’ve invented, shall we? Let’s make these terms and conditions apply, but only providing that they apply here, where we can implement the very logic that birthed it all. Let’s go with the flow; roll in the zeitgeist of play, but let’s not get blasé. Let’s take it all seriously, because play is serious.

The works of artists from Kumasi and Hamburg, joined by a recent chain of events, are presented to you this exhibition. The objects, paintings, texts, videos, performances, and material experiments that make up this show intertwine in curious ways as they form volatile landscapes expanding between the virtual, the physical, the imaginable and the utterly strange.

Program:

OCT 22: Opening night

6 pm: Talks by Dr. Bernard Akoi-Jackson and Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu (Hörsaal 229)
7 pm: Vernissage (HFBK gallery spaces)

OCT 23: Artist Talks

Hörsaal 229, HFBK, 6 to 8 pm

Akwasi Bediako Afrane
Fredrick Botchway
Adjo Kisser
Frederick Ebenezer Okai
Kezia Ouomoye Owusu-Ankomah
Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson

Speakers, Tuesday, Oct 22, 6 pm:

About Dr. Bernard Akoi-Jackson

Dr. Bernard Akoi-Jackson is a Ghanaian artist who lives and works from Tema/Accra/Kumasi. His multi-disciplinary, audience implicating installations. and performative “pseudo-rituals” have featured in umpteen exhibitions world-wide. Akoi-Jackson holds a PhD in Painting and Sculpture from the College of Art and Built Environment, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi where he lectures with particular interest in disruption and the revolutionary potential in contemporary art practice. He curated the inaugural exhibition: “Galle Winston Kofi Dawson: In Pursuit of something 'Beautiful', perhaps…” at the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Tamale, Ghana. He joins the curatorial team of the newly established Stellenbosch Triennale which will take off in February 2020.

About Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu

Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu is an artist, artistic director and a lecturer at the famed Fine Art Department of the same institution, where together with other colleagues, have pioneered revolutionary changes in fine art pedagogy, leading to the turning out of emerging artists who are making waves worldwide. He was the Head of the Department from 2011 to 2013, a period that propelled the popularity of the department worldwide. His research interests include; Post-Colonial Art Education in Ghana, and The Ramifications of the Modernist Hegemony on Ghanaian Contemporary Art Practice. His teaching and practice highlight experimentations and new ways of seeing and making art. As an ardent art administrator, organizer and facilitator of art and cultural programs he has been involved with the making of cutting edge exhibitions and workshops in and outside Ghana. He is also a co-founder, and the Administrative Coordinator of blaxTARLINES, Kumasi.

Wednesday, Oct 23, 6 pm:

About Akwasi Bediako Afrane

Akwasi Bediako Afrane's converts obsolete electronic gadgets, which he refers to as “amputees”, into new machine beings or “micro-organisms” he describes as “TRONS”. They are created within an expanded field of function, dysfunction and display, as they become ubiquitous beings, manifesting in both virtual and physical spaces.

About Fredrick Botchway

Fredrick Botchway's works couple photography and painting into single pieces through a reinvented oil painting medium and technique, engaging in conversations on form and photo aesthetics and how these ideas change overtime.

About Adjo Kisser

Adjo Kisser attempts to “disorient” audiences and publics through her use of narratives that seem familiar but have been reconstructed into mysterious soundscapes, texts, computer ‘viruses’, prints, drawings or GIFs.

About Frederick Ebenezer Okai

Frederick Ebenezer Okai pursues the material culture of Ghanaian pottery, researching into the tremendous ways this culture knits into the complex lives of humans.

About Kezia Ouomoye Owusu-Ankomah

Kezia Ouomoye Owusu-Ankomah's work is inspired by contacts with industrial materials, found objects and automated, interactive, mass produced toys through which she develops imaginary storytelling routines.

About Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson

Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson explores the latent ability of ubiquitous materials (synthetic or natural) transforming into unrecognizable, strange, new forms through mimicry and alchemical processes.

OPENING: OCT 22, 6 pm
ARTIST TALKS: OCT 23, 6 pm
Exhibition open from OCT 23-26, 2019, 3 pm – 8 pm
at Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Lerchenfeld 2, 22081 Hamburg