Grotto includes works by 32 graduate students, from paintings, sculptures, video and sound works, prints, drawings, installations and performances by Larry Kojo Akodor aka  Bonćhaka, Offert Albers, Arhun Aksakal, Elisaveta Braslavskaja, Camille Clair, Tugce Dayioglu, Albert Dietrich, Aires de Gameiro, Rahel Goetsch, Lisa Gutscher, Paul Haas, Ishmat Habib, Louis Hay, Samuel Baah Kortey, Julian Krause, Line Lyhne, Tomás Maglione, A.M., francisco m.v., Richard Najorka, Anna Pezzoli, Aline Sofie Rainer, Eva George Richardson McCrea, Brandon Rowland, Gintarė Sokelytė, Hilda Stammarnäs, Lisa Strozyk, Simon Shim-Sutcliffe, Jia Jun Nicholas Toh, Alyona Volkova, Ian Waelder and Alicja Wysocka. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication.

Graduating students from the classes of Monika Baer, Gerard Byrne, Willem de Rooij, Judith Hopf, Hassan Khan, Tobias Rehberger and Haegue Yang.

The exhibition is curated by Melissa Destino.

Grotto is made possible by the generous support of the Hessian Ministry of Science and Art. Significant support is provided by Allen & Overy LLP, Ernst Max von Grunelius - Stiftung, CLL Switzerland AG, Sammlung Pohl gGmbH, and Städelschule Portikus e.V.. Additional support comes from blackolive, bauart Beratende Ingenieure, WPV Baubetreuung GmbH, and Farcon Architectural Services and Concepts.

Graduate Prizes

1) Ian Waelder (Städelschule Portikus e.V.)
2) Line Lyhne und Francisco Morales (Sammlung Pohl)

Jury

Devrim Bayar (Kuratorin, KANAL-Centre Pompidou), Lutz Behrendt (Vertreter Städelschule Portikus e.V.), Dr. Ana Pohl (Geschäftsführerin, Sammlung Pohl), Dr. Julia Galandi-Pascual (Direktorin, Sammlung Pohl), Prof. Yasmil Raymond (Rektorin, Städelschule und Direktorin, Portikus)

Photo credits – unless otherwise stated – exhibition views: Augustine Paredes; repro photography: Eric Bell; video stills: courtesy of the artists.

Graduates 2023

Larry Kojo Adorkor aka Larry Bonćhaka

b. 1994, Accra, Ghana
Class of Willem de Rooij

Larry Kojo Adorkor aka Larry Bonćhaka is a culture innovator and contemporary artist with a passion for exploring and reimagining historical representation. He is a co-founder of the collectives ASAFO BLACK and COMMUNE 6X3. Through the use of objects, music, and images, he seeks to create a dialogue between past and present, inviting viewers to consider the ways in which history shapes our understanding of the world today. Adorkor has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, and his work has been recognized with numerous awards and honors. Through his innovative approach to historical representation and commitment to pushing the boundaries of art, he continues to inspire and captivate audiences around the world.

Amazing Race, 2023, Dimension variable, 4:23 min

Offert Albers

b. 2000, Wiesbaden, Germany
Class of Judith Hopf

Offert Albers has been studying at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main under Prof. Judith Hopf since 2020. He previously studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Prof. Franka Hörnschemeyer. His work is concerned with the production, circulation, and reception of images, often posing systematic questions to the medium of photography and using it as a metaphor to analyze the contexts and structures in which his projects are presented. Since 2020, he is a scholar of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. His work was recently shown at KIT Düsseldorf (2022), Opelvillen Rüsselsheim (2023) and Frankfurter Kunstverein (2023).

125 grit (commissioned), 2023, white aluminum-dibond, 30 x 40 cm 

250 grit (commissioned), 2023, white aluminum-dibond, 30 x 40 cm 

500 grit (commissioned), 2023, white aluminum-dibond, 30 x 40 cm

1000 grit (commissioned), 2023, white aluminum-dibond, 30 x 40 cm

2000 grit (commissioned), 2023, White aluminum-dibond, 30 x 40 cm  

4000 grit (commissioned), 2023, White aluminum-dibond, 30 x 40 cm

Arhun Aksakal

b. 1995, Offenbach am Main, Germany
Class of Willem de Rooij

Arhun Aksakal is an artist of Turkish descent, living and working in Frankfurt am Main.  Aksakal's work encompasses video, photography, sculpture, and performance. He is interested in human perception and explores phenomena of civilizational activity and geological time. His works move between personal biography, human artifacts, urban psychology, and their geographical infrastructure, carried by a natural aesthetic. They depict an instinctive reversal, revival, or the human obsession with renewal and reorganization.

Since 2020 he has been studying at the Städelschule in the class of Willem de Rooij and Cyprien Gailliard. Previously, he was at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, University of Sulaimani, Iraq/Kurdistan and Università IUAV di Venezia, Italy

1923, 2023 

MDF, resin, black magnetite (volcanic) sand (northern Türkiye), flock, each 200x140x95 cm

25 hours, 2018 
C-print, No°8, 159 x 117 cm     

25 hours, 2023 
Minox C, 8x11mm , B/W film negative, 24 x 18 cm 

Elisaveta Braslavskaja

b. 1997, Marburg, Germany 
Class of Tobias Rehberger 

Elisaveta Braslavskaja lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. She studied at Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main and Cooper Union, New York. In her practice, she combines materials and techniques from seemingly diverging contexts. Ornamental embroideries, formally inspired by miniature painting, weave two-dimensional layers into sculptural objects. She uses watercolor, drawing, silkscreen and embroidery on paper. By over blending the coarse grid structure of the prints and then piercing them with colored threads, the printing technique, drawing, and hand embroidery merge into a new form. This gesture suggests moments of physical and psychological presence. She creates an interplay of composition and material that is at the core of her intimate and expressive art practice.

A Small Dance From The Sky VI, 2023
Silkscreen on handmade paper, embroidery, framed, 146 x 104 cm

Camille Clair

b. 1997, New York, USA 
Class of Monika Baer 

Camille Clair is an artist and writer from Los Angeles. She utilizes narrative devices, such as allegory and hyperbole, in the assembly of her visual work as she does in her writing. Camille embodies different roles: orator, psychic, archivist in order to produce cogent artifacts. 

Colledion, 2023
Foamboard, wood, modeling clay, epoxy, hinges, tissue, glass particulate, opalescent pigment, acrylic, watercolor, mica flake.
Dimensions vary

Pectus Carinatum, 2023, Silkscreen, framed, 62 x 52"

Axilla, 2023, Silkscreen, framed, 62 x 52"

Tricusp, 2023, Silkscreen, framed, 62 x 52"

Tugce Dayioglu

b. 1990 Istanbul, Turkey 
Class of Tobias Rehberger

Tugce Dayioglu lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She studied at the Städelschule under Tobias Rehberger, Painting at the Marmara University, Faculty of Fine Arts. Within her practice, she mainly works with the medium of painting. Through her exploration of multiple surfaces, she works simultaneously to juxtapose them as on compositions. These compositions consist of geometrical patterns that she encountered in architecture and building sites. Through her practice she has developed a strong interest in how forms and colors relate with each other and how the dialogue created between space and painting can exist and evolve.

Black 3, 2023
Acrylic paint on multiplex panel, 220 x 350 cm

Albert Dietrich

b. 1997, Hamburg, Germany 
Class of Monika Baer 

Albert Dietrich is a painter whose work extends from intuitive gestures that also include sculpture. With the use of commonplace objects he creates displays in which paintings are informed by auxiliary entities. 

Bienenstich, 2023
Installation, shelf, wood, lacquer 

Aires de Gameiro

b. 1989, Lisbon, Portugal 
Class of Tobias Rehberger

Aires de Gameiro works and lives between Frankfurt am Main and Lisbon. He studied fine arts at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. In his practice, he questions the hierarchy of the medium in both painting and sculpture. Aiming at the display purpose of the work itself, the artist presents an approach that allows him to answer questions about the limits set by the canvas and three-dimensional space. His work was exhibited in Portugal, Germany, Italy and Spain, including: A hell behind me, Solo Show at Aaaa Nordhavn, Copenhagen, Denmark 2023; Traum oder Trauma, Solo Show at Amore Gallery, Milano, Italy 2022; I wish I could stay but I don’t want to, Solo Exhibiton at G10, Darmstadt, Germany, 2022; Só uma batota por jogo, SoloShow at Balcony Gallery, Lisbon, 2021; Apophenia, Group Show at Fidelidade Arte, Culturgest, Lisbon, 2020; LASH 23, Group Show at Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Alemanha 2019; Solo Exhibition, Mauro Mattei Art Trust Acquisition Prize 2019, Milano 2019; The Theory of Clouds, Group Show at Spazio Buonasera, Turin 2019; Kinema, Solo Exhibition at Las Palmas, Lisbon 2018. 

I can't take this any longer, 2023, oil on canvas, 240 x 160 cm

Can I die from this?, 2023, oil on canvas, 240 x 160 cm

Installation, 2023, canvas mounted on wood, 320 x 450 cm

Dad said "No dogs", 2023, Acrylic paint on plaster cast, 25 x 44 x 40 cm

POV: panic attack, 2023, oil on canvas, 40 x 30cm

Rahel Goetsch

b. 1993, Oldenburg, Germany 
Class of Judith Hopf

She likes to draw a lot.

Das Gewicht der Tage (The Weight of Days), 2023
Drawing series, Pencil, oil pen on paper, 70 x 100 cm

Lisa Gutscher

b. 1991, Stuttgart, Germany 
Class of Judith Hopf 

Lisa Gutscher lives in different places throughout the Japanese archipelago. In 2022 she began researching Japanese ancient culture and cultic systems on sites funded by Cusanuswerk and Koganecho Air and Management Center. In 2021, as a DAAD-scholar, she studied Georgian Polyphony in the Caucasus region. Gutscher’s artist book the mind is the body was published by Maria Editions in 2022. She will have a solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Darmstadt in September 2023.

Gutscher’s work consists of bodies made up of both found and haphazardly produced attributes. It stands as a network of abiding incompletion, an ever changing choir of urgencies and pleasures, contusions and failures, that communally relay polyphonically.

Thinking is a magical act in which the self intersects the environement, 2023
Lidl supermarket elements, rope, 30 x 10 x 4 m 

Magic LIDL TV (Willing is what keeps open the possibility of deviation), 2023
Video

Paul Haas

b. 1992, Eilenburg, Germany 
Class of Gerard Byrne 

Paul Haas studied at Bauhaus University Weimar under Ursula Damm and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main under Gerard Byrne. His current video works focus on the representation of the „West” and the former Federal Republic of Germany in the films of the GDR. Through the reenactment of selected scenes, Haas places the aesthetics and narrative modes of these films in relation to the present. Through the associative montage of gestures, movements and looks, he breaks away from the linear narrative structure of the originals. This allows him to be playful with the actions, functions and features of his characters. His work is not about what is said, but how it is said, performed or realized.

Earnestly or Seriously (Scene 1, Take 61, Pygmalion), 2023,
3-channel video Installation, 4:3, stereo, color

Sander, Ric and Sunny, 2023
Video, 16:9, stereo, color, 15 min

Garderobenschrank 1G, Eiche, Mattiert, Leupolit (Warderobe 1G, Oak, Matt, Leupolit), 2023
Melamine coated wood, 110 x 50 x 162 cm

Ishmat Habib

b. 1998, Bantul, Indonesia 
Class of Willem de Rooij 

Ishmat Habib lives and works between Frankfurt and Prague. He studied at Indonesia Institute of Arts in Yogyakarta until 2021 and, in the same year, he spent one semester at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. His painting practice is based on the stories of Java philosophy, which is how Habib grew up and continues living. He works with the memory of places and the oral history –one that exists outside the material support of books– that is passed down from generation to generation.  His practice draws inspiration from the driving forces and beings that inhabit the landscape and the unwritten rules that maintain the balance between the original and human worlds. Aware that these relationships and knowledge are rapidly disappearing, he relies on intuitive storytelling and seeks to allegorize them. 

Don't water it down, 2023, oil on linen, 200 x 170 cm

Stinking corpse, 2023, oil on linen, 200 x 190 cm

Untitled, 2023, oil on linen, 150 x 200 cm

Untitled, 2023, oil on linen, 200 x 170 cm each diptych

Louis Hay

b. 1996, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 
Class of Gerard Byrne

Louis Hay’s artistic practice is centered on the production of video works that incorporate cinematic and sculptural vocabularies. His projects examine the relation between form and thought and the representability of subjectivity. He studied under Clemens von Wedemeyer at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig and under Gerard Byrne at Städelschule.

The 3rd Complementary Day of Year 12 (Fever Dream Study), 2023, 4K video, color, sound, 11 min

Death Certificate of Méchain, 1804–2023, framed documents, 70 x 90 cm

Samuel Baah Kortey

b. 1994, Asesewa, Ghana 
Class of Willem de Rooij 

Samuel Baah Kortey is a multi-sensory artist, thinker and a visual researcher from Kumasi, Ghana. While being an art student in Kumasi, Ghana, Baah Kortey started paying attention to the post-colonial traces present in his environment, society, and modern life in general. His installations and interventions have explored and examined the hyper-visible expressions that characterize behaviors of people, cities and countries. Samuel Baah Kortey has a BFA and MFA from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (2013–2022). He co-founded the Asafo Black Collective and is a member of blaxTARLINES and COMMUNE 6x3. He has shown in the 2020 Stellenbosch Triennial and the 2022 Documenta 15 together with the collectives Asafo Black and blaxTARLINES Kumasi. Currently, he is a fellow and resident at Villa Romana, Italy.

LIBRARY OF REFLECTION, 00BC-FOREVER, 2023
Dimension variable, acrylics, pastels and photographs on paper and golden circles on floor 

Julian Krause

b. 1996, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany 
Class of Monika Baer 

Julian Krause is a German sculptor. His work relates to liminal spaces and is concerned with various modes of mimetic technology and their material and spatial limitations. Antiquity becomes a weightless cipher of virtuality.

Untitled, 2023, 4K video, 0:42

Untitled, 2023, 70 x 80 cm, print

Line Lyhne

b. 1991, Aarhus, Denmark 
Class of Tobias Rehberger 

Line Lyhne lives and works in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She studied at the Städelschule Frankfurt am Main, Accademia de Belle Arti di Brera Milano and Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg. Lyhne’s works employ various art historical references, thus formally resist a clear classification. Committed to both the craft of making and a conceptual framework, she includes in her practice different materials and methodologies, from hand crafting to the employment of readymades. She scrutinizes the boundaries between fine and applied arts, straddling the territories of historical fine art references and sociopolitical questions related to domestic space. Her works call attention to the space around them exploring hierarchies between architecture, object and body. 

Bürolandschaft, 2023 
Steel, galvanisation, chrome, zinc, cast aluminum, house key, glass, paper, dimensions variable 

Thomas Maglione

b. 1985, Buenos Aires, Argentina 
Class of Hassan Khan

Lives and works in Frankfurt and Main.

when it burns form the inside, 2023
Single channel videoinstallation, stereo, color, 16 min

A.M.

b. 1995, Athens, Greece
Class of Haegue Yang 

Lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. 

Heel tags, 2023
Mixed media/performance 

francisco m.v.

b. 1990, R.M. Santiago, Chile 
Class of Haegue Yang 

Lives and works in Berlin.

Astronomers without stars: a flexible line, third world table, unpublished, the hows and the whys, we no longer have to abandon the bottom to look for the top, drama class, the end, 2023, mixed media, dimensions variable

Richard Najorka

b. 1997, Düsseldorf, Germany 
Class of Judith Hopf 

Richard Najorka started studying Fine Art at Kunsthochschule Kassel in 2017, where he developed an interest in conceptual sculpture. In his practice he started to make each work from a dimensionally identical block of material, none of which would be allowed to get removed in the process of sculpting. Also, reflecting on monumentalism led him to prefer making objects that are large scale but delicate, cheap to produce, and very lightweight. He continued his studies at Städelschule in 2020, where he experimented with different materials and started working with audio. As his subjects of interest become more political, his main topic remains the use of materials and the way this allows him to reflect on aspects of value, longevity and scale. He is recipient of the Deutschlandstipendium (2021) and the Gerda Arndt Gedächtnispreis (2023). 

Life (2023)
32 boxes, rope, unglazed ceramics, styrofoam, epoxy, Alpinaweiß, wood glue, latex binder, mounting adhesive, acrylic glass, light bulbs, sockets, power chord, foam adhesive, power strip, tape, debris

Anna Pezzoli

b. 1995, Bergamo, Italy 
Class of Hassan Khan 

Anna Pezzoli lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. Within her artistic practice, Pezzoli focuses on natural phenomena and the essential temporal changes that take place within this realm. The use of organic materials is consistent in her work, often incorporating movements within themselves, growing, desiccating, decaying. Pezzoli has a BFA from G. Carrara Academy in Bergamo, where she graduated with the research thesis Più Verde, publicly presented at Fondazione Merz in Turin (2018). 

An Exploding Aunt or My research in nine stages, 2023
Inkjet print on paper, lasercut, ring wire, calendar hangers, candy worm, 9 pieces 43 x 29,7 cm

Aline Sofie Rainer

Eva George Richardson McCrea

Brandon Rowland

Gintarė Sokelytė

Hilda Stammarnäs

Lisa Strozyk

Simon Shim-Sutcliffe

Jia Jun Nicholas Toh

Alyona Volkova

Ian Waelder

Alicija Wysocka