Kunstverein Nürnberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft

In “Untitled (A Love Song)”, Christian Naujoks’s practice finds resonance with works by Heike-Karin Föll and Erika Landström. Notation, text, rhythm, and sound—the core components of love songs—appear and reappear in various works in the exhibition. The desire for an unspecified other is (in)audibly conveyed within them: They betray cautious gestures of affection and withdrawal, of approaching but also retreating.

The point of departure for “Untitled (A Love Song)” is Christian Naujoks’s research on hearing impairments, which are made productive as compositional principles. Building on Pauline Oliveros’s (1932-2016) “Sonic Meditations”, which establish empathic and precise listening as a practice for art and life, Naujoks stresses the potential of resistance within an ever-fractured corporality. Fragility is interpreted as a distinctive quality. Conventional notions of illness are replaced by new scales of ability. Meanwhile, rehearsal as a methodology of repetition gains a particular significance. Here, practice (as exercise) serves less as a means for reproducing and preserving established knowledge, but rather as a tool for the liberation from conventional structures and forms of representation. As a result, Christian Naujoks’s musical pieces and sculptural notations are reshaped during workshops accompanying the exhibition and enriched with input from participants. Central to Erika Landström’s work is the interplay between text as spoken and as written, where the voice moves between interior and exterior spaces—shifting from an internal, bodily resonance to an external, shared presence in the world. Her works on view are informed by the subjective perception of sounds as noise. Heike-Karin Föll’s work is influenced by an interest in the repeatability and recognizability of signs also as a form of dialogue between sender and receiver. In the tension between rigid and loose ways of thinking, articulation and dispersion, her paintings and drawings always remain the result of a registered movement.

Heike-Karin Föll is an artist and professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. In addition to extensive international solo exhibitions at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin and the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, her works have recently been shown at Oskar Weiss, Zurich, Emanuela Campoli, Paris/Mailand; and Hot Wheels, Athens. 

Erika Landström is an artist and writer working in performance, installation, and sculpture. Her writing ranges from criticism to poetry, and her work has been shown at the Klosterruine Berlin, The Emily Harvey Foundation, New York and the Montréal Biennale. She is an active member of the writing and performance group “Pure Fiction”.

Christian Naujoks is a composer, musician and artist. He has realized exhibition projects and performances at the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Sonic Somatic, Florence or Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg. His EP “Nocturne” was released last year. 

Performances by Christian Naujoks will take place at the opening on April 4 at Kunstverein Nürnberg and as part of the “Blaue Nacht” on May 16 and 17 at Krafftscher Hof. Workshops of the artist will take place on April 23rd and 24th at Kunstverein, please get in touch if you would like to participate: mail@kunstvereinnuernberg.de. 

Curator: Nele Kaczmarek
Assistant Curator: Leonie Schmiese 

Article Nürnberger Nachrichten, Birgit Ruf