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UNSER SYSTEM Erika Hock Opening reception: Friday, 12 March, 2010, 7pm The exhibition Unser System (Our System), initiated by Peter K. Koch, assembles four artistic positions and shows works by Erika Hock, Jan Kämmerling, Tamara Lorenz, and Peter K. Koch himself. A system is a totality of individuals or elements that are interrelated so that they can be seen as a unity granting meaning or purpose. Its individual parts operate alternately. An operating system sets itself apart from its surroundings. A system is organized and maintained by way of structure. The form of system elements and their relationship to one another is called structure. A system is never false, but at best more or less utilitarian. So far so good: but if we think strictly in these terms, than any group exhibition that is at all halfway successful is at the same time a “system” exhibition, for a functioning mutual impact of the existing art works is the least that can be expected from an exhibition. Although we often encounter just the opposite, that is, an aggregate exhibition, characterized by an entirely unstructured assembly of individual elements. “Unser System (Our System)” is precisely not that: instead it relates in a quite targeted fashion with four artists who exhibit similarities and intersections both in terms of the systematicity of their way of working. All four operate in more or less non-figurative systems and with processes of transformation, e.g. from the temporary to the lasting, the performative to the static, the dynamic to the stable, adaptive to the autonomous, the flat to the spatial, and architectural to the sculptural. In the course of their artistic life, each of the four artists has developed their own fully independent system of operating. Like all good artists, each of the four occasionally integrates disturbances into their own system to examine the stability of their own actions. But since this system itself is only part of an ensemble of systems and with it the characteristic of an overarching system is defined, in this exhibition relation becomes context.
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