SOLBATEMIM #5 ≈ Kunstverein Bielefeld No265|25 is comprised of 14 edited publications, published by Kunstverein Bielefeld (fka Bielefelder Kunstverein, Museum Waldhof) between 1990 & 2024. Various inserts (pasted b/w Xerographs on Pergraphica classic rough, 90g/m2) ☐, 1 poster (screen print on scrap paper, folded DIN A2, graphic design by Max Schropp) ☐, 1 pencil sharpened on both ends ☐, 2 invitation cards & exhibition floorplans for They are putting out apples, it must be fall. ☐ 2 photographs (digital print) ☐, a plastic sleeve ☐ have been added.
Concept by Thomas Neumann, Sophie Isabel Urban, Simon Wienk-Borgert (Linienstraße).
Image credits & copyrights correspond to the underlying publications & Linienstraße, 2025.

Organised as Linienstraße (together with Thomas Neumann and Sophie Isabel Urban)
With works by Nura Afnan-Samandari, Geta Brătescu, Michael Franz, Gabriel Kuri, Paul Niedermayer and Michel Wagenschütz in collaboration with Theodor Dathe
Kunstverein Bielefeld, 2024-2025, Installation Views by AR

︎︎︎Further information

2024, The installation has no title, but seeks to unfold in a loose constellation of references and overlapping, subjective narratives. The installation remains searching for a plateau while understanding its’ own making as a continuous derive.
It encompasses three or four arrangements of imagery and objects as well as a contribution by SOLBATEMIM (#004).

Contribution for shifting by Johanna Terhechte at oxfordberlin, Berlin, 2024.
Together with Ludwig Kuffer and Johanna Terhechte.

as Siemon Ponnts

2024, Porous Repair, Petershof, Cologne

With Works by Jürgen Drescher, Buket Isgören, Victoria Tarak, Sophie Thun and works by the group caring for the project.
Steel cable suspension for the interior, on the occasion of the inaugural exhibition at Linienstraße, early 2024.

2023, Graduation at Kunstakadmie Düsseldorf, Installation Views by Kai Werner Schmidt

︎︎︎Full Documentation

Through an ongoing process of collecting, (de)composing and densifying both my own and third-party materials, I develop a responsive archive of work fragments and invariants. ¹

The makeshift arrangements of sculptures, ready-mades, photographs, and drawings do not pursue a hierarchical logic, but instead reflect on my approach to processing information as such. 

1    After the exhibitions, all installations and works are disassembled into smaller parts, partially archived (invariants) or further processed until they create a sufficient synergy in a new constellation with other updated fragments, depending upon the exhibition context.

This sleeve of one of the book architectures (see 6) was made of acrylic glass and underwent several iterations. It continued to feel as insufficient, so it was detached from the remaining material and photographically re-examined. I subsequently used cellophane instead.

2    By using illustrations, and typographic elements or by creating drawings that derive from plan material such as elevations and layout schemes, I adopt a universal language.
Through the addition of other media and the open, processual approach to the materials 7 themselves, I develop a sense of subjectivity that in return blurs this generalizing claim.

In seeking a more personal understanding of place and site-sensitivity, my practice feels like a gradual approximation that allows for unresolved form and content. ³

Eventually leading to an installation; within objects and ephemeral gestures are temporarily bound together and can be read as a speculative opposition of notion, technique and aesthetics in a rather blurry method.
They can exist in open juxtaposition or consolidate into more static, contained forms. ⁴

3    BELVEDERE, 2019, PiK Deutz, Cologne

In Collaboration with Sophie Isabel Urban
Installation View, Mareike Tocha

4    Untitled Figure (22-I), 2022

The Untitled Figure series shows organic and machine-like objects made of hand-laminated cardboard layers. They are flesh and stone, looking out of and at the hegemony of technological modernity.
Constructed and organic objects are the focus of my sculptural interest. These opposites do not contradict each other, but add a human component to the work. Still, the impression produced is often one of addition (mechanical) and subtraction (organic).

I‘m interested in the similarity of organisms and other large-scale systems, connections between our biological understanding and our conceptual frameworks.

5    Repository Series (22-IV), 2022

Within the installations I use photographic materials from books and magazines taken from public bookshelves. The image sources themselves are sometimes arranged together with tools (agents) and objects, that are loosely connected with corresponding strands of thought around that time.
With a playful immediacy, they almost naturally evolve on the studio desk–a synthesis of narration and visual structure–showing different depths of personal involvement.

The Repository Series briefly constructs a perception of the world, which is then dissolved again.

6    Repository Series (Give and Take), 2024-2025

HDF, cellophane, wire, cable tie, rubber band, shrink tube, cork bowl, figurine, Leukopor, PUR glue, bookmark, publications (T. Damhaug – Die Netzhaut, 2010; V. Evans, M. Green – Cognitive Linguistics, An Introduction, 2006; S. Cartier, J. Martin, T. Meise – Kopf Hoch! Der Ratgeber fürs 21. Jahrhundert, 1999; The Editors of Consumer Reports with E. Kippel – How to Clean Practically Anything, 1996), 30 × 21 × 34 cm

I like to understand the articulation of contextual links and conceptual voids as an architectural activity, as a way of self-localisation and relating. Improvisation, as a means of mediating, helps abstract concepts to become emotionally charged and made tangible. ⁷

I want to break away from univocation, because it supports normalizing pedagogies of utilized viewing and passivity. ⁸
In my work‘s multiple legibility, the conceptual idea of a social space can unfold.

7    The series was taken from an elevated position, at night and with a flash. It served to examine my apartment, which was also simultaneously used as a studio and exhibition space (ÆdT — Am Ende des Tages) until 2023. I wanted to identify the boundaries of the rooms and the overlapping of the activities taking place in them.

Solarization is an overexposure of light-sensitive paper in the darkroom and causes mid-grey colours to shift uncontrollably.

8    visualsnow, 2023/Reprint 2024, 15x20cm, 48p., Xerox Laserprint, Edition of 20. SOLBATEMIM #001

The publishing of corresponding artist books is a complementary method to document ephemeral impressions and constellations within the installations and to contrast them with further related, secondary information.

Within collaborative frameworks such as Linienstraße, SOLBATEMIM or the alias unfamiliar Arrangements ^9,10, I have been exploring the parameters of what art can mean to me. The individual work and collaborative projects form parallel activities that feed into one another and continue to inform my visual language and methods:
juxtaposition/adaptation, collision/communication, care/violation 

Like all social practices, they are carried out through embodied routines ¹¹ and the sensible use of their corresponding material components. I try to remain conscious of that.

— early 2025*
parts based on a text by Marie Himmerich from 2023

9    A pattern was burnt onto this sugar cone using a heat gun. Two other cones were worked on with a soldering pen and had small sketches on their surface. Next to them was a large drawing with sugar water on the floor, which only became visible in the course of the exhibition.

The cone was part of an environment at regatta2, Düsseldorf (2021) and created as unfamiliar Arrangements (w/ Philipp Naujoks, Sophie Urban).

10    Ominous Tales of a Dreaming Wrinkle, Scherben, Berlin, 2022, as unfamiliar Arrangements (w/ Boaz Friedmann, Karólína Olafsdóttir, Sophie Urban)