so i took part in the blooom award competition and ended up on the art fair as one of the finalists. it was a great experience (although i didn't win one of the prizes) - among us contenders we had a very friendly atmosphere. i also liked the concept of finding ways to integrate young and independent (i.e. not gallery-represented) art into an established art fair. this is usually not an easy thing to do as the generation of customers/collectors are too old to relate to topics we work with. well, at least this is the case with my work there - who, at the age of 50 to 70 years, has any connection to big ghettoblasters? for people of my age it is a symbol of the early hiphop-culture which we all somehow witnessed (at least everyone grew up with beastie boys, right?). this doesn't mean they all have to like it but it is at least nothing completely unknown. art is always an expression of the zeitgeist and the feeling of a generation and for this reason also a key to understanding the latter. i can't wait to see the art of the young people born into a facebook-world, for sure they will have other focuses than us being born into pre-mobile-phone world. i was feeling already a little bit old when someone told me my work felt nostalgic to him. fortunately there are always those existential things in art everyone can relate to because at the end of the day life holds in some kind of sense the same challenges for everybody. with that wisdom being dropped, greetings to all the blooom award finalists:
anna kubelik (congratulations!), stefan fromberger, marius leneweit & rocio rodríguez, azusa kuno, simona petrauskaite, lesley schulze, katrin elsen, andrea horezky and last not least the boys jan glisman, steffen kraska & david rival
this is the official video about us:
