Artists

Gregor Hildebrandt

Press release

In Gregor Hildebrandt’s first solo exhibition at LOHAUS GALLERY, the ambiguity of his art transformed into music resonates throughout. The title Ein Raum mit zwei Türen (A Room with Two Doors), as if sung by Blixa Bargeld, initially describes the physical gallery space while simultaneously becoming a metaphor: two directions, two decisions, a place in between that points beyond the visible—an elsewhere, another possibility. Gregor Hildebrandt transforms the space into a place between sound and silence, memory and transience. Once the decision has been made as to which door one enters the room through, one is immersed in the silent sound of the works. Magnetic tape in its characteristic black-brown hues stretches across every wall of the room. Once a carrier of music and voices, it becomes visual material here. Its sound remains invisible and inaudible, yet is stored within it as memory. The works move between presence and absence: what was recorded is no longer directly accessible, yet remains inscribed. At the centre of the exhibition are the two large-format works Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind (Where Have All the Flowers Gone) and Über Gräbern weht der Wind (The Wind Blows over Graves). They refer to Marlene Dietrich’s anti-war song, which became an anthem of pacifism. Composed of black and white tape, the works are conceived as positive and negative. Flowers and graves form the beginning and end of the same cycle. The flowers stand for beauty and transience, but also for memory and loss—themes that Marlene Dietrich sings about so hauntingly in her famous song. The question of what remains and what disappears runs through the entire space. Marlene Dietrich herself is present in one of Gregor Hildebrandt’s unmistakable cassette display cases. Her portrait appears within it both fragmented and preserved. The work becomes a repository in which memory, transience and beauty are interconnected. In Ein Raum mit zwei Türen, the seemingly silent material becomes a resonating body. The music cannot be heard, yet it is present within the works. Images become spaces of memory, surfaces become carriers of voices from the past. Between the two doors, a space opens up in which the absent remains present.