The Call

Exhibition: June 29 – July 21, 2024

Schaumainkai 69, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours Thursdays through Sundays, 12 – 8 p.m.

Opening: Friday, June 28, 2024, 6 – 10 p.m. 

8:30 p. m. Performance Binary Composition (in triangular formation) by Donghoon Gang with cellists Sophie-Justine Herr and Leonie Maier

The graduate exhibition The Call includes works by 26 students from seven classes, who will present their paintings, sculptures, installations, films and video, sound works and performances. The exhibition is a testimony to the students’ growth and formation through an intensive exchange between students, professors, guest professors, teachers, and invited lecturers. The title of the graduation show, The Call, resonates with this dynamic environment of Städelschule, imaginable as the buzzing of a myriad calls: An environment of rings and resonances.

The artists are Bogdan Ablozhnyy, Benjamin Tiberius Adler, Amanda Assaley, Yvo Cho, Jiyoon Chung, Donghoon Gang, Samuel Linus Gromann (†), Zishi Han, Cyril Tyrone Hübscher, Sopo Kashakashvili, Mahya Ketabchi, Emilie Estrid Kjær, Koon Kwon, Siyi Li, Antonio López, Hemansingh Lutchmun, Günther Möbius, Nina Nadig, Thuy Tien Nguyen, Chaeheun Park, Eric Powell, Gabriele Rendina Cattani, Emma Rosenzweig, Arthur Stachurski, Andreas Tang, and Dmitry Teselkin.

From the classes of Monika Baer, Gerard Byrne, Judith Hopf, Hassan Khan, Tobias Rehberger, Willem de Rooij, Haegue Yang, and former professor Peter Fischli.

The exhibition is curated by Johanna Laub.

Information for Visitors

Opening Hours
Thursdays till Sundays, 12 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Free entry

Public guided tours are offered on Sundays at 3 p.m.

Further tours, offered in cooperation with the Curatorial Studies program, are gladly organized upon request via e-mail (kunstkoordinatioon@staedelschule.de).

Graduate Prizes

The winners of the 2024 graduate prizes are:

1. Thuy Tien Nguyen (Städelschule Portikus e.V.)
2. Donghoon Gang (Sammlung Pohl)
3. Jiyoon Chung (Sammlung Pohl)

The jury for the graduate prizes 2024, kindly sponsored by Städelschule Portikus e.V. and Sammlung Pohl, consists of Julia Magnus (Representative, Städelschule Portikus e.V.), Dr. Julia Galandi-Pascual (Director, Sammlung Pohl), Yasmin Naderi Afschar (Co-Director, Kunsthalle Mainz), and Prof. Yasmil Raymond (Rector, Städelschule and Director, Portikus).

Catalog

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog that will be available at the exhibition space, the Städelschule library and Buchhandlung Walther König in Frankfurt. The concept of the catalog is developed by the graduates.

Supporters and Sponsors

The Call is made possible by major support from Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Arts and Culture. Significant support is provided by Allen Overy Shearman Sterling LLP, Ernst Max von Grunelius-Stiftung, Sammlung Pohl gGmbH and Städelschule Portikus e.V. Additional support comes from LBBW Immobilien Group.

Artist biographies

Bogdan Ablozhnyy

Class of Monika Baer
b. 1994, Welsk, Russia

Bogdan Ablozhnyy’s practice is critically engaged with sculpture and photography and often finds its form in arrangements that occupy multiple spatial levels that exist within a realm of image production, language, and memory. This continuous investigation in endless constellations and spatial worlds in his practice ranges from ensembles of objects, material artifacts and immaterial phenomena within ‘enclosed’ space, to the way temporality is being approached in each iteration of the piece.

Echoing psychoanalytical readings of the term Fracture, which refers to a break in different iterations of a patient’s dream but also to a gap happening between personality shifts in Dissociative Identity Disorder, Ablozhnyy has been referencing this term in his recent body of work to largely identify with it, but also transferring it to the material part of the work, structure and compositional logic that exists within the whole body of work.

Benjamin Tiberius Adler

Class of Tobias Rehberger
b. 1988, Marburg, Germany

Benjamin Tiberius Adler completed his studies with the master student award at the Städelschule under Tobias Rehberger, having previously studied fine art at the HBK Braunschweig. Prior to this art-related career, he earned an LL.M. in Business Law from the University of Kassel and a B.A. in Business Administration with a focus on law from the University of Oldenburg. Adler has exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions, including a solo exhibition at the Gmünder Kunstverein and group exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Basel (Switzerland) and the Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg. He currently holds an artist residency scholarship from the city of Duisburg and is a lecturer at the TU Dortmund. Above all, he is fascinated by the raw, man-made, material-based, anti-digital production of art, in which the imperfect, human, sometimes dilettantish is just as important as the real materiality and far-reaching consequences of human action.

Amanda Assaley

Class of Hassan Khan
b. 1996, Huntington, USA

Amanda Assaley lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. She studied at Städelschule in the class of Hassan Khan, having previously studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Yale Norfolk School of Art. In her work, Assaley articulates images, objects, film, and video through a sculptural language, asking questions such as how the vernacular may upset power dynamics and address ongoing experiences of violence and decomposition. Her works arrive by way of restless formal processes of desire, leverage, and mutation as these interlace with the production of political realities. In centering method to produce and engage subject matter, Assaley’s works function as exercises in, or conduits for, struggle.

Yvo Cho

Class of Willem de Rooij
b. 1994, Heidelberg, Germany

Yvo Cho lives and works in Frankfurt am Main and Cologne. Before joining the class of Willem de Rooij, he studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Trisha Donnelly and Christopher Williams.

His works were recently shown at UA26 (Vienna), The Wig (Berlin) and Catherine Zeta (Cologne). Since 2022 he is running the gallery Clementin Seedorf in Cologne.

Jiyoon Chung

Class of Tobias Rehberger
b. 1990, Seoul, South Korea

Jiyoon Chung’s practice centers on invoking the performative condition of objects portraying societal conventions and urban relics. In Chung’s work, she refers to (im)materials that reflect on order, obedience and coercion and their paradoxical psychological effects within an everyday setting. Through multidisciplinary methods such as installation, sound, and photography, she employs auto-fictional languages to establish socio-psychological conditions and reflect on the dynamics of subjective selfhood, prompting the context to craft psychological atmospheres.

Chung’s works have been exhibited in solo exhibitions, Condition Reserved, Kornhäschen, Aschaffenburg, Germany (2024) and Payday, N/A Gallery, Seoul, South Korea (2022). Her work was also featured in several group exhibitions in Kunstverein Wiesen, Wiesen (2023); saasfee*pavillion, Frankfurt am Main (2022); Hall1, Seoul (2022); Sinchon Arts Space, Seoul (2021); Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden (2019).

Donghoon Gang

Class of Willem de Rooij
b. 1992, Jeju, South Korea

Donghoon Gang is an artist and composer based in Frankfurt am Main and Seoul. He studied philosophy and composition before studying at Städelschule. His work delves into how music and sound are consumed and integrated into history and society from perspectives in musicology and psychology. He primarily blurs the boundary between visual art and music, mainly showcasing immersive and site-specific installations through acoustic composition with multichannel audio, incorporating various mediums such as scent, sculpture, photography, and video.

Samuel Linus Gromann

Class of Judith Hopf
b. 1994, Vienna, Austria – d. 2023, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Samuel Linus Gromann studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna with Hans Schabus and at Städelschule in the class of Judith Hopf. Gromann’s work is concerned with the signification of everyday objects, which he charges with symbolic, associative, sometimes surreal connotations. By defamiliarizing material and texture, the physical space opens up to imaginary worlds and fictional narratives.

Gromann’s work has been presented at Alyssa Davis Gallery (New York, USA), fffriedrich (Frankfurt am Main), Gärtnergasse (Vienna, Austria), Kunsthalle Bratislava (Slovakia), Pfeiler (Vienna, Austria), the Kettelviks Stenmuseum (Burgsvik, Sweden), and Via Cesare Balbo (Milan, Italy) among others.

Zishi Han

Class of Haegue Yang
b. 1990, Beijing, China

Zishi Han probes masochistic attachment to power structures through installation, video, performance, sculpture, and drawing. Han is drawn to things that hold and let through, such as vessels, pipes, ducts and channels, and their zoomorphic and anthropomorphic qualities as shells, skins, and veins. Concerned with ‘the density of air’ of a space, he orchestrates a densely layered sensorial experience and populates the space with apparatuses that act as conduits of divergent energy, often possessed, and perverted by ephemeral elements such as vibration, light, scent, and mist. He explores how these forms bear witness to the entanglement of power, cultural identity, sexuality, and interpersonal relationships, and how they have the potential to dismantle previous relations and incubate unexplored desires.

Solo exhibitions of Zishi’s work have been held at saasfee*satellit, Frankfurt am Main (2023) and MEWO Kunsthalle Memmingen (2021). His work has been featured in group exhibitions and performance programmes in Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2024); West Den Haag (2024); Delfina Foundation, London (2023); HUA International, Berlin (2022); Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (2021); Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como (2021) and Palmengarten Frankfurt (2020). His upcoming projects will be shown in Busan Biennale (2024); Sculpture Center, New York (2025) and Politikens Forhal, Copenhagen (2025).

Cyril Tyrone Hübscher

Class of Judith Hopf
b. 1993, Bern, Switzerland

I believe in the transformative power of imagination.
I seek for forms of honesty and a vision of the world that is both escapist and rooted in reality. My practice centers on the creation of objects, sculptures, paintings, drawings and exhibitions. Theory comes after practice.

Sopo Kashakashvili

Class of Judith Hopf
b. 1994, Tbilisi, Georgia

Sopo Kashakashvili /sopokash is a Georgian cross-disciplinary artist and cultural facilitator. In her work, she explores individual/collective histories, migration and interrelation between the body and architecture. Her core research is in social coexistence, response to immediate environments and deconstruction of language. Sopo Kashakashvili’s work is rooted in spatial installations, which she refers to as ‘social constellations’. Within these, videos, sound, performance, and texts interlay to create immersive experiences. Workshops with children, incorporating urban life materials and textiles, can often be seen in her works. Another crucial layer in her practice is collaborative and collective work, public interventions, and mobile structures. She is a founding member of collective commune6x3. Her most recent work was part of Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm in collaboration with textxtnd. In 2023, she won the 2nd place at PlayGround Art prize and currently is completing her residency with blaxTARLINES, KNUST, in Kumasi Ghana exchange between Städelschule supported by KfW Stiftung.

Mahya Ketabchi

Class of Hassan Khan and Peter Fischli
b. 1990, Tehran, Iran

Mahya Ketabchi is based in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. They hold a BA in Architecture and studied Graphic design, before studying at Städelschule. Their practice is focused on the transformative potential of sonic imagery, spatiality, and consciousness. They restage the real and familiar sounds within fictional domains through their field recordings and the power of listening as a gateway and as an intersubjective act. Ketabchi creates spatial imaginaries to (re-)shape the geographical subjectivity of social and material volumes and to (re-)engage with the unknown in the process of searching as an essential process of communality. Crucial to their practice, they have organized numerous reading performances, sonic events, collaborations, and radio shows.

Emilie Estrid Kjær

Class of Willem de Rooij
b. 1994, Copenhagen, Denmark

Emilie Estrid Kjær is living and working in Frankfurt am Main and Copenhagen. She has been studying fine arts at Städelschule, and rhetoric and sociology of religion at the University of Copenhagen. Through a combination of sculpture, drawing, and embroidery, she is looking at which values decorations, grammar, and language constructions are passing on. Central to her practice is an interest in how this approach can be a way to examine and analyze the embedded “logics” of language and communication.

Koon Kwon

Class of Tobias Rehberger
b. 1990, Pohang, South Korea

Koon Kwon works and lives between Frankfurt am Main and Seoul. She works with ceramics, sculpture, and painting to re-awaken the connection between humans and nature. In particular, during this time of transition between humans and transhumans, she seeks to end violence based on the dichotomy of subject and object through body studies of forgotten or latent humanity. For Kwon, the spiritual practice of discovering divinity within oneself is a path that seeks both personal growth and social change. To add, Kwon fully recovers the lost senses of the body through the sun and moon and conveys the cycle of “birth-death-rebirth” that living matter experiences through various hues, symbols, and patterns. And through such, she begins to bring the rhythm of light to viewers — and she has shown such meaningful works through her six solo exhibitions since 2020:

The Future Coming & Receding (2023), Seoul; July Euphoria (2021), Seoul; Lady Seoh’s Spiritual Eyes for the Sun and the Moon (2021), Pohang; The Return of the Lost Time (2021), Seoul; What I See (2020), Pohang; Resonating Room (2016), Frankfurt am Main. Her work has been shown in group shows at venues such as Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Zaha Museum, South Korea; MMCA, South Korea, among others.

Siyi Li

Class of Judith Hopf
b. 1999, Guang'an, China

Siyi Li is an artist who currently lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Adopting humble conceptual gestures and particular production processes, he preserves ephemeral emotions as antidotes to shattered contemporary life. Li received a BA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2021 and Meisterschüler from Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main in 2024. His recent solo and group exhibitions include, Cryababy at CIBRIÁN (San Sebastián, ES, 2023), Half Life at Franz Kaka (Toronto, CA, 2023), Softpretty at fffriedrich (Frankfurt am Main, DE, 2023), Mostly Sunny at Fragile (Berlin, DE, 2022), +1 at Tor Art Space (Frankfurt am Main, DE, 2021) and Late Works: Preparations at Cafe Oto (London, UK, 2021).

Antonio López

Class of Monika Baer
b. 1993, Quito, Ecuador

Antonio López is currently based in Frankfurt am Main. He holds a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2017). Recent exhibitions include Hydra (or downtown) at Louche Ops, Berlin (2024); Glower at Larder, LA (2023); Flintlock at ECHO, Köln (2023); Tidal at fffriedrich, Frankfurt am Main (2023); and Errandt at Rudimento, Quito (2021).

Hemansingh Lutchmun

Class of Gerard Byrne
b. 1995, Goodlands, Mauritius

Hemansingh Lutchmun is a Mauritian-born artist who is currently based in Frankfurt am Main. He works with time-based media and sculptural objects using raw materials such as sand, clay, and salt. In his practice he explores the relation of nature and labor in terms of extraction, displacement, and domestication. Drawing from popular media and personal experience, he engages with the topics of growth, decay, and seductiveness.

Günther Möbius

Class of Judith Hopf
b. 1997, Berlin, Germany

Günther Möbius lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. He studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Christopher Williams before joining the class of Judith Hopf. The artist constructs fictional worlds by combining his sculptural and literary practices. His sculptures take the form of architecture and stage set models as well as figurative character designs. His writing takes the formats of alternate history or fanfiction. Both activities are pursued with a kitbashing and tinkering approach. In his work, he incorporates the areas of spatial memory, Anarchitecture, and level design.

Nina Nadig

Class of Gerard Byrne
b. 1991, Langenhagen, Germany

Nina Nadig is an artist currently living and working in Frankfurt am Main. Her artistic practice spans between solo and collaborative projects and deals with questions about the interplay of intuition and structure, collectivity and personal desire, competition, and contemplation. Nadig studied a BFA in Political-Science and Sociology at the University of Münster and is currently a Meister student under Prof. Gerard Byrne at Städelschule.

Her solo and group exhibitions include presentations at Eulengasse in Frankfurt am Main/DE (2024); Magma Maria in Offenbach/DE (2024); Willow in Seoul/KOR (2023); FRAGILE in Berlin/DE (2022); St. Lukes in Cork, IR (2022); the Goethe-Institut in Dublin/IR (2022); and Fonda in Leipzig/D (2021); Palmengarten in Frankfurt am Main/DE (2020).

Thuy Tien Nguyen

Class of Haegue Yang
b. 1993, Hanoi, Vietnam

Thuy Tien Nguyen is an artist based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and Hanoi, Vietnam.
Nguyen’s artistic practice revolves around the transformation of personal and collective memories, examining how they are distorted, translated, and reconstructed over time. Her recent works explore the concept of home and discipline, often portraying fragmented and ambiguous impressions of domestic objects and how their relationships manifest within and beyond ordinary daily life. Whether by her use of objects, installations, photography, or situations, her practice often takes on the appearance of accidental occurrences or their remnants, leaving behind hints and a sense of disorientation in the spaces she engages with. Nguyen earned a BA from the Hanoi Academy of Theatre and Cinema in 2015 and studied with Haegue Yang at Städelschule from 2018 to 2024.

Recent exhibitions include "Upright Winter" at Alte Seilerei (Frankfurt am Main, DE, 2023), "Soft Proof" at Museum Angewandte Kunst (Frankfurt am Main, DE, 2024), "Good Old Neon" at Nova Contemporary (Bangkok, THA, 2024), "POWER HOUSE - energy rising" at Nova Space, Schiller Museum (Weimar, DE, 2023), "A Mangrove Apple Tree" at documenta 15, Stadtmuseum (Kassel, DE, 2023), and "Touch Release" at Wiesbaden Kunstverein (Wiesbaden, DE, 2021).

Chaeheun Park

Class of Monika Baer
b. 1996, Seoul, South Korea

Chaeheun Park lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. She obtained a BFA from Chung-ang University in Korea in 2021. Joining Städelschule the following year. She thinks of painting as a malleable interface existing between culture and daily life. The work is often diaristic in nature.

Eric Powell

Class of Tobias Rehberger
b. 1984, Pittsburgh, United States

Eric Powell lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. Before the Städelschule he studied photojournalism at the Corcoran College of Art & Design in Washington D.C. In 2008 he moved to Beijing, China and enrolled in The People's University of China to learn the Chinese language. From 2012 to 2018 he was the studio assistant to the artist Ai Weiwei and moved with the artist to Berlin. His work takes the form of highly polished multicolor reflective wood panel paintings and hand thrown ceramic vessels. Building on a decisively international aesthetic with an openness to influences from disparate sources, he creates objects that elevate domicile sensibilities beyond perfunctory functionality.

Gabriele Rendina Cattani

Class of Gerard Byrne
b. 1990, Rome, Italy

Gabriele Rendina Cattani studied at the Städelschule in the class of Gerard Byrne from 2018 until 2024. Through performance, video and installation, he incorporates family archives and personal objects to explore the transmission, inheritance and appropriation of narratives. In his practice he often adapts literary works as theatrical vignettes and tableaux vivants in which desire and the representation of sexuality hold a central role in aesthetic reflection. Recently his works were shown at Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art (IT); MEWO Kunsthalle, Memmingen (DE), Goethe Institute, Dublin (IR); and is part of the collection of Museion, Bolzano (IT). His next performance will feature at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (IT).

Emma Rosenzweig

Class of Gerard Byrne
b. 1990, Hvidovre, Denmark

Based in Frankfurt am Main and Copenhagen, Rosenzweig works with film, text, and performance. Her works exist at the intersection of art and literature, and incorporate elements and inspiration from theoretical psychology, commercials, and the beauty industry. As a young woman, working as a model and actress, Rosenzweig’s artistic practice circles around themes such as objectification of the femme body, generational gaps, jealousy, the body for sale and loneliness. Rosenzweig has a background of journalism working with radio, and she has been writing essays about art and film for the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen as part of her practice since 2019. She is publishing her first novel “I Give Evertyhing Away” in Denmark in August 2024.

Selected works: “What Has She Had Done”, 2024, three video installations; “The Period” film collage, shown at Goethe Institute Ireland, 2022; “No More Sugar For Her Teeth”, 2019, film; “EDEN”, 2020, film, “Beautiful Boy”, 2018, film; “The Blue Hour”, 2018-2019, filmclub at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, “The Second Sex”, 2018, Kunstforeningen Gl. Strand, Copenhagen. Rosenzweig’s first solo show in Copenhagen at Galleri Tom Christoffersen will open in August 2024.

Arthur Stachurski

Class of Gerard Byrne
b. 1991, Ridgewood, USA

Arthur Stachurski lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. In his sculptures, he uses material as a means of exploring how personal history intersects with mainstream or dominant discourses, and typically works with minimal forms, a variety of materials, and an uneasy embodiment of craft.

Andreas Tang

Class of Tobias Rehberger
b. 1995, Horsens, Denmark

Andreas Tang lives and works in Frankfurt am Main and Copenhagen. Before his studies at Städelschule he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Recently his work has been presented in group exhibitions and film festivals, among others at Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen, DK), Bizarro (Copenhagen, DK), coyote (Stockholm, SE), 25FPS (Zagreb, HR) and CPH:DOX (Copenhagen, DK).

Dmitry Teselkin

Class of Tobias Rehberger
b. 1985, Nizhny Tagil, USSR

Dimitry Teselkin works and lives in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His work revolves primarily around the fabrication and variable reconfiguration of a single geometric form. It is influenced visually in equal measure by the aesthetics of minimalism and industrial design in the context of social intervention and reflecting on art as a game.

Exhibitions include: Kunstverein B-Ebene, Milchsack Fabrik, Kunstverein Familie Montez, Forum 1822 der Frankfurter Sparkasse, (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), IKOB - Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst (Eupen Belgium), Pino Pascali Foundation (Polignano a Mare, Italy), The Flat Massimo Carasi (Milan, Italy), State Museum of Architecture. A.V. Shchusev, MoMA Moscow (Russia), Biennale of Young Art Moscow 2010 (Russia), Kandinsky National prize Central House of Artists Moscow 2009 (Russia), "Innovation 2008" National prize N.C.C.A. Moscow (Russia), Museum of Anna Akhmatova, Institute "ProArte", Sergei Kuryokhin prize (St. Petersburg, Russia).