In AREA CODE, sculptures by Janine Eggert and drawings by Alekos Hofstetter come together as different but intertwined approaches to the built world. The exhibition sees itself as a condensation of codes—material, architectural, and imaginary—and invites viewers to interpret sculpture and drawing as interfaces between reality, memory, and projection.
“Area Code” refers to systems of classification and addressing: to geographical markers as well as to technical and social codes that structure spaces, objects, and perception. As the English translation for “area code,” the term denotes the moment before a telephone connection is established—a threshold at which belonging and distance are already determined. In the exhibition, AREA CODE becomes a shared space for reflection, in which sculpture and drawing appear as carriers of such codes: as forms between function and abstraction, between built space and utopian projection.
Janine Eggert's sculptural works transform industrially manufactured objects and materials into independent, ornamentally charged forms. The starting point is technical components and functional fragments whose original purpose is negated through processes of enlargement, material displacement, and color transformation. Through the use of colored epoxy resin and high-gloss coatings, these elements undergo a process of de-functionalization, oscillating between abstraction and recognizability.
The sculptures reveal the aesthetic dimension of supposedly neutral functional forms and question hierarchical attributions of practicality, efficiency, and value that characterize industrial design and the built environment. As space-defining bodies, they enter into dialogue with urban scales and the logic of construction. In doing so, they mark an interspace in which function becomes fiction and ornamental exaggeration appears as a critical instrument.
Alekos Hofstetter's architecture-related drawings in his “Tannhäuser Tor” series are inspired by the disappearance of post-war modernist buildings from our environment and public consciousness. With this disappearance, their former utopian promise dissolves. How relevant is this experience of loss to our society? It is Hofstetter's construction of the utopian context of a “New Home” that reveals the distance our society has established from modern architecture.
Alekos Hofstetter's drawings focus on exploring the relationship between time and memory. His works on paper show the superimposition of iconic, emblematic architecture with lettering and elements from comics. Hofstetter's motifs range from social housing to intricate architectural complexes and sculptural structures in deserted spaces to swimming pools and monumental buildings on the moon. | | | | The B-Part Exhibition space accompanies the future development of the Urbane Mitte Am Gleisdreieck with artistic autonomy and thus at the same time enters into a dialogue with the overarching themes of the overall project - forms of New Work, Co-working, Culture and Sport - and creates synergies between artistic, cultural and social approaches. The artistic director of the B-Part Exhibition is Rüdiger Lange (loop - raum für aktuelle kunst). |
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