A Streetcar Named DesirE

FRANK JIMIN HOPP

Duration : 30.08 - 15.11.24

In the exhibition A Streetcar Named Desire, Kang Contemporary stages a postmodern travesty with the artist Frank Jimin Hopp. The present is showcased in its life-threatening absurdity as a place of paradox, where an aesthetically fuelled consumer fetish continues against the backdrop of global doomsday scenarios: Where an increasing number of flights over melting glaciers invites you to get sentimental at an altitude of 10,000 metres; where a golf tournament is played against the horizon of burning forests - despite the impaired visibility - and, where cakes collapsing in the heat are consumed with uninhibited glee.

Conceptually, Kang Contemporary thus ties in with the global phenomenon of the fatigue society, which, in view of ever new crises, despite the acute need for action, tends towards a dangerous passivity. The core of the exhibition aesthetic is to allow the paradox of the crisis and its ambivalent images to be experienced. The scene is conceived as a banquet installation with ceramics, sculptures and paintings. The thematic hub is the fire, as an ambivalent metaphor of cultural progress and decay, which, as it were, fuels the flashpoint of the catastrophe.