DC Open 2024: My Highlights in Cologne
Once again, the gallery event sucks the artworld into the Rhineland, presenting the local scene in its best light. Here are my favorite shows I saw so far.
Tobias Spichtig: People
A fashion designer stumbles into their brutalist loft after a wild fashion week party. With residue cocain and espresso martinis in their system, they clumsily search not for their bed but a sketchbook. Unable to find pencils anywhere nearby, they pull out blush, lipsticks, and contoursticks out of the vintage Issey Miyake purse: they frantically smudge the sketch onto the paper, obsessively bringing to life the vision that tortured them like the desire to throw up ever since they got into the Uber home. Several sharp lines, big smokey eyes, pouty lips, and one fight with the sleep paralysis demon in the corner later, the new collection of the upcoming show was born at 5:30 am on a Wednesday morning.
Maybe that’s not exactly how Tobias Spichtig (Millennial, Swiss) conceived his oil paintings, but I’d like to think that my version comes somewhere close.
Jan Kaps, through October 26, 2024, Lindenstrasse 20, 50674 Cologne
Eetu Sihvonen: Lacrimal Lake House
Eetu’s (Millennial, Finnish) sculptures are what happens if you take your grandma’s wooden home decor, rewatch Alice in Wonderland, and play around with a 3D printer. Burnt pine wood carved in intricate forms is turned into frames, cabinets, poles, and lanterns. Eggs keep popping up again and again, cracked, laced, transforming into a teardrop or a clock or a door. Their soft blue looks even more tender and fragile against the dark charred wood. Eetu’s work is undeniably the art incarnation of the 🧚she was a fairy🧚 sound.
Gaa Gallery, through November 2, 2024, Antwerpener Strasse 4, 50672 Cologne
ameratherm: ultra cooking lab. Julia Scher
The world is burning and the popcorn is popping at DREI. Julia Scher (Baby Boomer, American) filled the gallery space with pink microwaves and the smell of the go-to-cinema-snack. A performer offers them freshly made to visitors. The vibes shift drastically once you notice the pink human figures. They look like action heros that lost their super suits. These naked men fall onto their knees in agony, they are cramped together in a microwave, they crouch underneath an oven trey as if hiding from the injection needles ontop. The design is very human. Cameras hide in plain sight inside some of the kitchen tools. Surveillance is for our own security, I guess…
When Julia first made these works in the early 2000s, they brought back the images of German extermination camps. Twenty years later, they don’t look like traumatic remnants of the past but solemn warnings of what might become the present.
DREI, through October 26, 2024, Jülicher Strasse 14, 50674 Cologne
Soojin Kang: Forgive yourself for everything
Soojin’s sculptures (Gen X, Korean) bring together extreme opposites. Fibers and threads of cotton, jute, raw silk, and hemp seem to break out of concrete. But even the concrete breathes through pores. A woven mandorla is not inserted into the cement but excavated from it.
The works presented at Khoshbakht are her first ones to include concrete. Metal rods and plaster mesh peaking out suggest that Soojin took a piece from a construction site into the gallery. Layers built by humans and grown by nature intertwine. New life sprouts from the ruins, and so does the future from the past.
Khoshbakht, through October 19, 2024, Jülicher Strasse 24a, 50674 Cologne
Regular Volley
While I do find the title rather cryptic, the exhibition’s content is relatable as ever: Love, love, love. And don’t we all love love? And sometimes, we love to hate it. La Felce brings together Essi Kuokkanen (Millennial, Finnish) & Björn Knapp (Millennial, German), Essi adding a figurative and Björn an abstract perspective on the all-consuming fuzzy feeling.
Essi puts the sensation of love into surreal paintings. Be it losing one’s head and realizing that one caught feelings, putting the load on the emotional support pet, crying one’s heartbreak out until fountains water new sprouts, or literally Crushing (2024) on someone: Two bodies intertwine, their enamoured faces staring at each other, yet the overwhelming dominance of their twirled shapes suggest that you can quickly crush someone with your overwhelming love…
Björn on the other hand keeps things cryptic, both in the titles and the contents. Oil paint draped into fabric fills his canvases, staying in a blue-red-beige range. Looking at them, I don’t know where the sky and the earth is, a feeling as dizzying as a crush. Those images might capture a hot air baloon being inflated, but maybe it’s already the deflation after falling hard for someone.
La Felce, through September 29, 2024, Senefelderstrasse 3, 50825 Cologne
Leafcutter John plays Piero Golia or viceversa
JUBG is consitent in delivering a feverdream and I am here for it. Piero Golia (Gen X, American) stretched a conveyer belt through the whole exhibition. Continuously moving, the attached sticks slap against the objects underneath. Kinda reminds me of those viral chain reaction videos.
Piero turns sculptures, flowers, vases, boxes, pictures, barrells, and much more stuff into musical instruments. But this “stuff” is not any stuff. In fact, it’s stuff that Piero’s artist friends didn’t end up using for their own work and passed on to him. The hits make the objects scream, some ouches are muffed, others crystal clear. To me, this work is such a disrespectfully fun way of asking “is this art or trash?” because its parts were literally discarded, and now, look at us. Who would have thought?
JUBG, through September 28, 2024, Albertusstrasse 13-17, 50667 Cologne
Mary-Audrey Ramirez: Companions
First things first: NORMALIZE PRINTING PHOTOGRAPHS ON SATIN. It. Looks. So. Dope. No annoying reflection, and you still get that glossy finish. That’s what Mary-Audrey (Millennial, Luxembourgish) did here and I guess I’ll never accept any other type of print from now on.
Mary-Audrey plays with AI and video game aesthetics. You know that meme that says the devil keeps his pets in Australia? She creates artificial little creatures, some of them fluffy and cute, others rather slimy and scary. In appearance, they range from axolotl to catish and canine, dwelling in habitats that are made up just like them. She gives them cute names like Not a morning person or Hi, empty eyes. Some little fellas are 3D-sculpted with sand. I want to pet their velvety skin so bad… Even if they are made up, they are vulnerable, smol, and fragile. Will you still take care of them?
Petra Martinetz, through October 12, 2024, Moltkestrasse 81, 50674 Cologne
DC Open is a joint event of institutions, galleries, and off spaces in Düsseldorf and Cologne. This year’s edition took place from August 30 until September 1, 2024.
Don’t worry, I have more for you in store. Some shows gave me so much to think about that you’ll get a couple more in-depth reviews on those soon. Don’t forget to subscribe to be the first one to receive them in your inbox! If you liked this selection, please like and share this review. If you are around DC Open, I’d love to know about your favorite shows in the comments.
See you soon!!!
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic