Overview
NORMCORE
Exhibition by Sascha Appelhoff & Lena von Goedeke
September 7 – October 10, 2019
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 7, 6-8pm
normcore
9th Annual Storefront Installation
By Sascha Appelhoff & Lena von Goedeke
October 12 – November 16, 2019
Artist Talk: Wednesday, October 23, 6-8pm
American University Katzen Arts Center, 2nd Floor Rotunda – Room 201
Moderated by Andy Holtin, Associate Professor, Department of Art, American University
Co-Sponsored by AU Department of Art
Transformer is proud to present NORMCORE and normcore, an immersive, site-specific exhibition, followed by a condensed version of the exhibition as a storefront installation, by contemporary Berlin-based artists Sascha Appelhoff & Lena von Goedeke.
Playing with the recently coined ‘normcore’ trend - a portmanteau of normal and hardcore - this exhibition & storefront installation confront this trend’s underlying concept of strictly adhering to rules and standards as a way of rebelling and standing out, by reflecting on the way in which ‘norms’ are commonly perceived in Europe as a stand-in for bureaucracy. Appelhoff & von Goedeke challenge this concept, and the cliché of the uptight rule-following German, through their own perception of the ‘norm’ - in signs, sizes, and symbols - and by playing with the metric system in the USA, where none of these rules apply.
“If I take my sign language to describe a space, and the reader speaks a different one - what happens to space itself? “ - Sascha Appelhoff, Artist
NORMCORE is part of Transformer’s 2019 artistic partnership with Germany, taking place with support from the Wunderbar Together Year of German-American Friendship, and is presented in conjunction with Transformer's 16th Annual Silent Auction & Benefit Party, whose Diplomatic Chair this year is the German Ambassador Emily Haber. In addition to the back-to-back NORMCORE exhibition and normcore storefront installation at Transformer this fall, visiting German artists Sascha Appelhoff & Lena von Goedeke have curated a special selection of works by fellow emerging German artists to be featured in this year's Auction, taking place October 26, 2019 at the GWU/Corcoran School of the Arts & Design.
Transformer Exhibition Hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 12-6pm & by appointment.
ARTIST BIOS
Lena von Goedeke was born in Germany (1983) and graduated from Kunstakademie Duesseldorf and Kunstakademie Muenster in 2012. Her body of work consists of a wide variety of techniques and materials, as her main focus lies on the visualization of abstract scientific phenomena in a sensual and aesthetic way. Every chosen material or technique carries the problem and solution of a scientific issue in them, so her work often consists of only one matter dealing with its own properties. While her fragile and delicate handmade papercuts show the possibilities of describing a surface, a space or volume via digital imagery - polygon wireframes - her sculptures and installations are mainly site specific, often subtle, sometimes nearly invisible. Lena von Goedeke's work has been awarded several times and could be seen in Museum shows in Germany last year. She is being represented by Galerie m, Bochum and Bernhard Knaus Fine Art, Frankfurt.
Sascha Appelhoff (*1987, Germany) studied Fine Art at Kunstakademie Muenster and graduated with distinction. While he started as a painter, he developed a passion for the possibilities of silkscreen printing and digital imagery, which he understands as a natural extension of painting, just in a virtual world. He is crossing the line between reality and a virtual world constantly in the process of conceiving his wall prints or installations. A main topic is the never-ending potential of recycling imagery through print, fail and error. The process of the becoming of a shape, the planning, modeling, logistics and material properties are as important as the product itself. Sascha Appelhoff has exhibited in various art spaces through Germany and is running the independent art space HilbertRaum in Berlin.
CULTURAL PARTNERS
From October 2018 to the end of 2019, Germany will be celebrating a year of German-American friendship knowing that the United States and Germany are Wunderbar Together ― stronger as friends and partners. Wunderbar Together is a comprehensive and collaborative initiative funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, implemented by the Goethe-Institut, and supported by the Federation of German Industries (BDI).
The Goethe-Institut Washington organizes and supports cultural events that present German culture abroad and that further the transatlantic dialogue regarding today’s challenging questions. Our worldwide focuses are on topics such as the role of arts in urban development and the question of how we forge our future within the context of major transformations such as the crisis of democracy, climate change and the digitalization of our everyday life. Of special interest to us are aesthetic formats such as film and exhibition projects, panel series and theater performances.
