Late to the Party: Wrapping up 4 Shows in Cologne
I returned to Cologne just in time...for the summer hole 🫠... Let's see a Judge Judy episode, sus hotel rooms, stationery wet dreams, and a gentle trip on shrooms.
Embracing the Fold
Kinke Kooi and Roland Schimmel (both Baby Boomers, Dutch) are a couple in real life and exhibit here for the first time together, presenting works from the last 20-ish years. The artist Astrid Kasja Nylander and designer Pål Rodenius (both Millennials, Swedish) transformed the space into an otherworldly realm — no shoes on the carpet. It’s like a calming zone at a psych ward.
A mysterious sci-fi sound echoes through the three rooms. It comes from Roland’s video Blind Spot II (2004) hidden behind a curtain: In the early 2000s, he was commissioned to design a screensaver, an occasion that led him to experiment with video further. The patterns dissolve in light, barely visible, an illusion rather than actual image. Roland works with afterimages, what you see when you look into the sun for too long, for example. This is the first time an artist says they deal with the afterimage and it’s consequential for once.
Even though his paintings consist of abstract gradients and concrete shapes, they are depictions of physical, optical phenomena and therefore kinda figurative. The wall painting Forms of Vitality (2025) worked quite well for the hypnotic effect. One untitled work from 2010 is structured around three black circles that made me even think of planetary eclipses. I preferred the acrylic paintings over the watercolors. The latter didn’t have that hypnotic effect because the diffusion is simply the result of painting with watercolors. It lacked the sharpness of afterimages.
Kinke slayed the boots house down. I felt the ground shake; that’s how hard she slayed. Her drawing style is so incredibly intricate and dreamy. I assumed she and Anna Oppermann (1940-93, German) must have crossed paths at some point, but they never did. Sometimes, she uses a light color pencil to sculpt the image from the darker paper. She forms membranes, cells, genitals, and fabric folds so delicately with bright, precise pencil strokes. I was starstruck by her new triptych, Hospitality (2025). It looks like an evolution happening in time-lapse: A circle morphs into a pill morphs into a pearl morphs into a pimple morphs into a pea morphs into a flower pollen. The idea of evolution is enhanced by two cut-out images: A chimpanzee next to a hairy Mary Magdalene. In between, poetical lines, unintrusively written with a pencil. And then she added insects onto the flower petals like in a Baroque Dutch still life painting. You could really get close with a magnifying glass: When you think there’s no more space to add anything, she lifts a curtain to reveal a cozy, tiny interior. Again, this is sooo Anna Oppermann of her.
Next to the paintings, Kinke arranged objects like porcelain figurines and brooches. They feel too much, just like slightly kitch footnotes, especially considering that Kinke already integrates forks, shells, and jewelry directly into some of her works, which slays in a Meret Oppenheim (1913-85, Swiss-German) way [everybody in the audience energetically nods in agreement].
I know it sounds super cliché, but Kinke plays with gender expectations in her work. I notice measurement tools like measurement tapes and rulers worked into some folds. Objects too rigid for her indefinite, constantly evolving forms. She placed two drawings next to each other: A knife underneath a slit and a bee underneath a flower. Both have sexual undertones. And it’s impossible to see the image of a vertical slit without referencing Lucio Fontana’s (1899-1968, Italian) iconic (and kinda misogynist) slit canvases. In another room, Kinke displayed a found footage video of a bird’s mating dance: The male hides himself behind his wings, creating a dark, abstract curtain for his dance. So much for sensuality being a “naturally” feminine domain…
Temporary Gallery, May 10 to August 10, 2025. Mauritiuswall 35, 50676 Cologne
Corpus Iuris Artis: I. The Deposition
The long window front is covered with slightly mirrored foil. Together with the glaring LED lights above, it’s giving interrogation room at a police station. The space is stripped naked. There really is nothing inside except for a black office chair and a screen. The Artist Is NOT Present. I see her only on screen: Selin Davasse (Millennial, Turkish) plays a curator. Black turtleneck included, of course. She sits on a similar black office chair at a table. I can’t see much else for now except the wall behind her, some water bottles, and empty chairs to her left and right.
As the video goes on, I learn that the “curator” is on trial for tokenizing an artist for a group show. Tokenization is what everyone from big corp to politics has been involved in until now. Instead of promoting structural change, they choose a symbolic gesture that looks good PR wise but doesn’t actually positively impact marginalized communities. You can tell how dishonest those diversity programs are by the way that the T-Mobile CEO quickly dropped all DEI initiatives after Trump’s reelection.
In our court case, the curator is on trial because she invited an artist with the burden of representing a general diasporic perspective. Unrealistic that a court would even invest that much effort in protecting artists like that lol. Especially considering in which direction everything is moving politically right now… I read that this trial is based on Selin’s fictional art law book, the Corpus Iuris Artis, so it makes sense to assume that this scenario isn’t staged in our universe anyway. The judge/prosecutor/whatever, idk interrogates the “curator” who plays Bambi with big innocent eyes, absolutely obnoxious to any transgressions. I don’t get to finish the entire trial. I wonder what the verdict is going to be.
Back in the second room, I only see a court file on a wall. It’s the page with §213.2. on Deliberate and Depraved Tokenization. I love it when artists keep a bit going. After the definition, a cliffhanger: A person is guilty of Deliberate and Depraved Tokenization if: … There’s no other page. Alright, then. Keep your secrets. Interesting how the page is fringed at the side as if ripped out of a book. An air of rebellion within the clean bureaucratic framework.
Selin also does performances in the exhibition. I read that she’s taking on all the roles of prosecution, defense, witness, and judge. Quite fitting to how tokenized artists are expected to jump through all kinds of hoops and juggle all sorts of responsibilities: Represent your origin, make a political statement on your origin, critique the institution, make a connection to universally pressing issues, make everyone feel good about themselves after dealing with your art.
The Dean Kissicks of this world whine about how everything is about identity instead of “actual” art. Well, is that the artists’ fault? Are they to blame if curators and institutions got comfortable with stamping easily digestible labels on them instead of genuinely dealing with their art? Critic Jerry Saltz hasn’t said anything relevant in a while, but he’s right that being critical of an artwork is how you show it respect. So let’s be critical again.
Mouches Volantes, June 28 – August 09, 2025. Ebertplatz Passage 1, 50668 Cologne
Signe Raunkjær Holm: Honigfalle
When I came in, Signe (Millennial, Danish) was vacuuming the floor in what looked like a doctor’s waiting room at first. As I looked around, the space revealed itself to be an audition space. She showed me the second part behind the back curtain: A bedroom. It looks like the cheapest room you can find on Booking.com with a rating of 6,5 out of 10 (family-run, breakfast is included, but the scrambled eggs are suspiciously orange). Straight out of a Sveamaus meme. As I look around, there’s several cameras installed. Well, what could you possibly film in a hotel room…? On the shelf above the bed, I spot a red frame with info on this “day hotel” called “Honeytrap”. The connotation is now undeniable.
Signe explained that she made an open casting for a movie. Filming was part of a performance that took place during the opening and closing of the exhibition yesterday. Beyond those performances, Signe offered time slots in the day hotel Honeytrap: Whoever wanted to, could book an hourly slot for free. In return, everything that happens during that hour gets recorded and becomes part of a new movie.
I was irritated by the tapestry over the bed: It’s an image everyone with a post-Soviet background recognizes: Morning in a Pine Forest (1889) by Ivan Shishkin (1832-98) and Konstantin Savitsky (1844-1905, Russian). I was particularly irritated at the suggestion of an Eastern European context of sex work, a stereotype. The desperation and deception with which young Eastern European women are being trapped in sex work, often promised model or au pair jobs first. Signe understood my criticism, although she was going in a different direction: Honeytrapping describes an espionage tactic based on seduction. It was especially important during the Cold War, certain Soviet female spies were called “Mozhno girls”, because they were allowed to breach both geopolitical and sexual borders.
I always thought of the word honeytrap as something literal. Like the bears in that Russian painting trying to get to some honey and getting stuck, maybe something from hunting. The connotation of stereotypical sexualization still overweighs the geopolitical commentary, in my opinion. I would have loved to see those performances. Signe said she was interested in the power dynamics that developed when actors switched their lines. Back in the audition room, there was another screen with a short 20-minute film following a young woman. I didn’t feel like it connected much to the exhibition except as an illustration, an idea of a film that could result from those performances.
Moltkerei Werkstatt e.V., July 13 — August 9, 2025
Sara MacKillop: Attachments
Everywhere I look, there’s paper. Paper in DIN A-2 format. Blank pages interrupted by arrows and bookmarks cut out from magazines, ads, calendars, Ikea furniture assembly instructions, art supplies and stationery catalogs. It’s like a collage, but instead of wild overlaps, the cut-out shapes barely touch each other, keeping a sterile, orderly distance and allowing only the slightest contact.
This show is timed incredibly well for high summer. It made me think of that last third of every summer break back in school when dread and a weird excitement mixed. Dread because of the new school year approaching. Excitement because I’d get to buy nice new stationery during the “Back To School” Sale. A little treat that soothed the tummy pain of going back and helped me gaslight myself that I’ll finally be my most organized and productive self once I get that pretty ink pen and the edgy fun homework book (You either get the Häft craze or you don’t).
Stationery supply makes me think of class as well. Did your parents buy you the Faber-Castell 120-piece color pencil set, or did you get a simple pack from the discount store? Even college notebooks used to communicate status. Grey recycled pages or snow white glossy thick paper? That blue-white Oxford logo said everything. I went to a fancy school, always painfully aware of those things.
The works I mentioned earlier are part of Sara’s (Gen X, British) Paper Paper Clips series. In the exhibition text, Oliver Corino offers a connection to computer interfaces and their use of analog symbols such as the paper clip for e-mail attachments, the letter for e-mails, files for data, and bookmarks for saved websites:
“To ease this process along, the terminology of computer surfaces was designed to remind users seated before their screens of the familiar world of filing and the stationery shop as they fulfil in ever more internalised ways the basic law of bureaucracy according to which administrative techniques are transferred from the state to the individual.” — Oliver Corino, exhibition text
Plain clothing racks stand in some rooms. Instead of bags or coats, Sara hung books on belts like shoulder straps. Dictionaries, thesauruses, and quotation collections become wearable. Within the exhibition, those Book Bags are a cute add-on. But I’m not entirely convinced. Does digitalization make knowledge compact and easily accessible like a bag? The books should be more pocket-sized, then. Or can I get that bridge back to class with knowledge as nothing but mere accessories to be flexed and flaunted instead of applied?
Upstairs, Sara’s Wrapping paper shutter (2025) blocks my passage into the next room. I have to hunch a bit to pass through underneath. Although the horizontally stacked wrapping paper rolls are all uniquely patterned and bright, I felt reminded of Minimalism. I thought of Dan Flavin’s (1933-96, US-American) colorful light sculptures. And once again, I can’t think of this material without considering class. Did you grow up buying proper gift wrapping paper, or did you take the free rolls at the dm drugstore? Did you chaotically rip apart the wrapped presents or did you carefully unfold the paper and remove the tape to reuse the packaging for another present? I didn’t expect to go that deep down memory lane only by looking at some paper. Thank God school’s over…
Clages, June 27 — August 9, 2025, Brüsseler Str. 5, 50674 Cologne
Don’t worry, the institutions keep the summer break busy, so let’s see what’s going on there in the coming weeks!
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think :)
See you soon!!!
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic