Art Walk
Terra Incognita
Over 200 works of art
The Art Walk
curated by Celena J.-Ohmer
The Art Walk Terra Incognita, that unknown country, Named after the sea-soul cartographer Sigmund Freud, it is part of the narrative spatial development on the Union Area. In the combination of the Art Sculpture Park and the Resistance Trail, a topography of hope unfolds.
With more than 200 works by artists of different ages, genders and backgrounds, art represents the tension in which experimental concepts are visualized. The art trail opens up a panorama of the subjectivist realities and personal preferences of the founder, far from societal constraints and urban regulations.
Ardi Goldman is a visual person, with his own will to create, indeed a drive to create. On his premises he stages a play of expectations. With imagination he develops (s)his own narrative. In doing so, he does not feel bound by the canons of art history. Rather, he offers here a
an outcome-oriented playing field that wants to be unpredictable,
based on dialogue and communal participation, a collaborative laboratory within the urban space. Embedded in the everyday realities of life, the art – visible, audible, touchable, and walkable – expands expansively across the site.
Against the horror that emptiness can create, the „horror vacui,“ Goldman demonstratively acts against it by creating a „dwelling sphere“ in the exterior space, a third skin. Walls and architectural elements become projection surfaces, a part of the self displaced outward, as a means of exhibition.
Mind bombs - thought bombs
Art here is not a form of adornment; it does not follow the need for beauty, but serves as a „mind bomb.“ Visible signs initiated by Goldman are a manifestation of a world that has gone out of control. In a foreignized world, a „today“ in which war, alienation, and hatred dictate everyday life, the course becomes a space of possibility for arming against historical distortion and prejudice.
Art becomes a place of experience, where lived history and the drama of human existence are visualized. In doing so, the pedestrian is revealed to the subversive power of walking. Accidentally, ugly, irritating, or awe-inspiring elements can emerge, transformed or condensed. What seems to be an insignificant detail emerges. In the overall web of apparent disorder, a second or third level can be discovered.
In addition to the exhibition of Ardi Goldmanthe individual’s perspective, it is also possible to experience how lived reality is transformed into visual forms and new relationships of meaning are created. How traditional and lived history(s) become the resonance body and seismographs of our present and future. The curated „randomness“ of the donor, which may seem initially peculiar to the viewer, allows for associative connections. It allows us to trace the buried paths, roads, detours, and missed opportunities. And it awakens the longing to creatively shape our present and perhaps also our future, indeed to want to co-determine it. In doing so, it leads us to Joseph Beuys‘ idea:
„If you have cut yourself, you should connect the knife and not the wound.“
An invitation to actively engage with one’s own reality and the wounds of history. Personal perspectives, diverse experiences and encounters are presented that can be perceived as irritation, provocation, a joke or a challenge. In addition to text-based contributions, sculptural, installation and multi-dimensional media were considered, often realized in direct connection with the location, exclusively for the Union area. The parcours allows for a multiplicity of voices, which takes into account current art productions from Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region as well as national and international perspectives. In addition to the permanently installed, site-specific works, performative, situational program elements are also set up.
What is crucial in Ardi Goldman this context is not the recognition of the artistic position; rather, the visual message and its overall narrative are at the center.
He develops a kind of „Memorial of Love and Vigilance“, to provide comfort. Also to skillfully channel one's own pain from the past.
Ardi Goldman Kunst-
und Kulturstiftung gGmbH
Uniongelände
Hanauer Landstraße 188, 60314 Frankfurt am Main