SHELLS

The group exhibition SHELLS brings together artists Lukas Heerich, Ju Young Kim, Haroon Mirza, Rosanna Marie Pondorf, Michael Sailstorfer, Mona Schulzek, and Justin Urbach, whose works explore the multifaceted aspects of concealment, revelation, filtering, and reflection in various ways. Within this framework, Deva Schubert will present a site-specific performance. The title SHELLS – protective, enclosing, or form-giving structures – refers to both physical and metaphorical spaces. These can be open or closed, permeable or armored, shelters or resonance chambers, projection surfaces or membrane-like connections to other spheres. With an interdisciplinary approach, the artists investigate how shells function both as boundaries and mediators: What is enclosed, what escapes? What remains hidden, what is revealed? SHELLS becomes an open space for thought, extending beyond physical surfaces to include metaphorical, digital, and sonic enclosures. The exhibition architecture takes up these ideas by emphasizing sightlines, permeability, and fragmentation. Inserted grid modules divide the space into overlapping zones that both separate and connect. These modules themselves become projection surfaces – shells that reflect light, sound, and movement, forming new resonant spaces. Lukas Heerich explores tensions that emerge in personal and collective narratives of protection, isolation, and power. His sculptures, installations, and photographs are accompanied by extensive research, often incorporating historical and socio-cultural contexts. At the same time, Heerich draws on spontaneous situations and personal experiences, creating layered works in which seemingly ambivalent aspects confront one another. Influenced by fashion and club culture, his works reveal how the theme of control is intricately woven through various aspects of society. Ju Young Kim (*1991 in Seoul, KR) explores transitional states and transit zones in her sculptures and installations by combining industrial transportation modules from airplanes and cars into symbolically encoded works. Her explorations address the relativity of space and time from the perspective of a transcontinental traveler. In doing so, landscape motifs and traditional symbolism encounter industrial products and transport systems, constructing an image of an accelerated society where different cultural and temporal components collide. British-Pakistani artist Haroon Mirza (*1977 in London, UK) works with the medium of electricity to create multi-sensory works with sound and video. His works explore the interplay and interference of audiovisual signals, sounds, and light, inviting viewers to experience the relationship between individual components and the surrounding space in new ways. Within these dynamic systems, he combines references to technology and nature, spiritual practices and club culture, as well as socio-political questions. Rosanna Marie Pondorf (*1993 in Eching, DE) explores contemporary hierarchies and power structures in her sculptures and paintings by deconstructing and re-coding money, media images, and pornography. Elements of value creation, such as the circulation of money and the power of media images, as well as the hardware and structure behind our digital everyday life, are combined with traditional craftsmanship techniques or culturally significant materials. Pondorf sees her artistic work as a reflection of societal processes, aiming to understand and make visible the complexity and ambivalence of modern life for others. Michael Sailstorfer (*1979 in Velden, DE) combines physical materiality with poetic dimensions in his installations and sculptures, opening dialogues between space, movement, and transformation. Processes such as decay, growth, or movement extend this connection into a temporal dimension, carrying the works beyond their materiality. Through an experimental approach, he questions the functionality, symbolism, and perception of everyday objects and materials, exploring the dynamics of change and transience. By deconstructing and recontextualizing objects, his works develop both a strong physical presence and narrative depth. Deva Schubert (*1991) is a choreographer and dancer specializing in voice exploration. At the intersection of dance and installation, her works address questions of intimacy, collectivity, and the permeability of institutional and social structures. Schubert is particularly interested in moments of disruption—as gestures of resistance and potential for new narratives. Another focus of her practice is the leaking and disclosure of information, both in digital and physical forms. Her works examine the boundary between the private and the public, questioning normative orders and creating spaces for collective resonance. Mona Schulzek (*1992, lives and works in Berlin, DE) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is situated at the intersection of art and science, particularly astronomy. With a profound interest in the connection between human existence and the infinite dimensions of time and space, she views art as a cosmic language—a form of knowledge that transcends formulas and words. Schulzek’s artistic practice is based on a synthesis of terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials, such as steel, aluminum, meteorites, and scientific measurements, which she merges through experimental processes. By bringing these contrasts together, she interweaves individual, collective, and cosmic aspects, opening perspectives that position art as a bridge between the known and the unknown. Justin Urbach (*1995 in Munich, DE) explores the entanglement of humans and virtual reality in his artistic practice using time-based media. His work focuses on questions of mediality, materiality, transformation processes, and hybridity. Urbach creates visual worlds that reflect his interest in the relationships between humans, nature, and technology, employing technical systems such as MRI scans, 3D scans, and motion capture. By juxtaposing cool aesthetics and mechanized environments with the emotionality and vulnerability of characters and landscapes, he investigates the hybridity of different worlds.