Deichtorhallen Hamburg is presenting the exhibition Passage by the artist duo Jakob Lena Knebl & Ashley Hans Scheirl from Saturday, April 27, 2024. In the sensual, aesthetically highly charged installations of the Austrian duo Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl, nothing is as it seems: across all floors of the collection building, they create accessible, seductive worlds in a mix of sculpture, painting, design, staging, photography and film that captivate visitors.
Image above: Jakob Lena Knebl & Ashley Hans Scheirl, view of the exhibition Doppelganger!, Palais de Tokyo, Courtesy of the artists. Photo: Aurélien Mole
In these “spaces of desire” Knebl and Scheirl refer to the history of art and design in order to demonstrate their role in the construction of identity and to negotiate it in a contemporary context. The artists manage to walk the tightrope, combining fetishism and humor in surprising ways. They take bodies apart and put them back together. This diversity of works and beings challenges the boundaries of ‘good’ taste. The duo works with complex references. This exhibition ranges from grotesque to cyber aesthetics. There are references to Mary Shelley, Ada Lovelace, Luigi Colani, Hector Guimard and others.
Parts of the Palais de Tokyo exhibition DOPPELGANGER! flow into the first two levels. a, will be further developed, reassembled, supplemented and integrated into a new exhibition with works and installations that were designed for this location. The exhibition title PASSAGE refers to Walter Benjamin’s “passage work,” which remains fragmentary and deals with the rise of capitalism and modern consumer society. In Knebl and Scheirl’s equally fragmentary work, the architecture of the former Phoenixwerke plays a central role, as it is reminiscent of shopping arcades that emerged in Paris from the early 18th century. The visitors themselves become part of the exhibition, they become strollers and strollers. The duo plays with concepts of seeing and being seen, with the dynamics between public and private and with the mobilized gaze when strolling, which is being replaced by digital mobility in today’s aesthetic capitalism.
In addition to his own work, Jakob Lena Knebl also acts as an artist curator. On one floor, the exhibition will be complemented by a group exhibition with selected students from her class for Transmedia Art, University of Applied Arts Vienna and with students from the University of Fine Arts, HFBK Hamburg, class for Time Based Media by Prof. Angela Bulloch. Works selected by the artists from the Falckenberg Collection will also be on display.
Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl work both separately and as a duo. They exhibited together at the 15th Biennale de Lyon (2019) at the invitation of the Palais de Tokyo and at the Kunsthaus Bregenz (2020). They represented Austria at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022). The exhibition was created in cooperation with the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, where Knebl & Scheirl’s exhibition DOPPELGANGER! could be seen from October 2023 to January 2024.
WHEN?
Opening: Friday, 26. April 2024, 7 pm
Exhibition period: Saturday, 27. April until Sunday, 15. September
Opening hours:
Sat – Sun, noon – 5 pm
Guided tours every Friday, at noon, 3 pm and 5 pm
WHERE?
Sammlung Falckenberg, in den Phoenix-Fabrikhallen
Wilstorfer Str. 71, Tor 2
21073 Hamburg-Harburg
COSTS?
Saturday and Sunday: Free
Friday’s guided tours:
Regular 12 EUR
Reduced 9 EUR
