SAXA
Exhibition in the LOFT
"I LOVE WORDS. For me, words are important tools for artistic engagement with people and their stories. Reading and writing, listening and speaking serve dialogue. It's how we can reach each other."
Since his youth, SAXA has been writing poems and thoughts in the land of poets and thinkers. But it is not easy to make oneself heard and find attention. So he is always looking for new means and ways, forms and possibilities of expression. Why? To show his own enthusiasm - for our wonderful language, for stories, for communication and dialogue, and not least for our handwriting. For him, it is as unique and expressive as each and every one of us.
ELINOR HASSELBERG
Artworks on the corridors 1st to 4th floor
The Swedish artist Elinor Hasselberg studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cologne. From 2015 to 2020, she repeatedly exhibited her art in various galleries.
From now on, her digital painting art can be found in the corridors of the URBAN LOFT Cologne.
ROSA VIKTORIA AHLERS
Works of art in the corridors ground floor to 2nd basement floor
Growing up in a family of artists, her creative path already seemed predestined. She studied communication design and graduated in summer 2019. Today, she is passionate about working as a freelance illustrator and tattoo artist.
Her work deals with words from all over the world that are not translatable into other languages. She has transformed the terms into colourful, surrealistic illustrations. The amazing and beautiful thing is that no matter which distant and foreign country the words come from, they are always relatable to all. The theme is ideal for a place as international as the URBAN LOFT. Cultures from all over the world meet here and find a common togetherness. Her other paintings, which find space in the URBAN LOFT, also surround a cosmopolitan and accessible atmosphere.
MONIKA AICHELE
Artwork in the rooms
Monika Aichele studied art education, art history and French in Stuttgart. She then found her way when she studied graphic design and illustration with Heinz Edelmann, who became famous as the illustrator of the Beatles' film "Yellow Submarine".
While still a student, she received her first illustration commission from the New York Times. Since then, Monika Aichele has illustrated regularly for the New York Times on political, economic and social topics. Among other things, she draws and animates for the art magazine Frieze, for the FAZ, for Swiss television, makes books for the Büchergilde Gutenberg and designs three-dimensional objects. For example, in collaboration with the New York designer Stefan Sagmeister, she created six giant inflatable monkey sculptures, which, after a world tour, were also on display in Frankfurt in 2016 on the roof of the Museum of Applied Arts.
STOHEAD
Graffiti on the facade & artwork in the rooms
Christoph Haessler, 1973, Germany, lives and works in Berlin. Over the years that he has established himself as an artist, he has gone through various phases of graffiti art. Like many others, he began with classical calligraphy in the late 1980s. The script transmits the information, writing offers the possibility to put thoughts and feelings into a form. This is where Stohead found the connection between written street art and the art form we have come to know in recent years. Constantly evolving and reinventing and yet not losing one's identity as an artist - that's what makes a good artist.
ELKE BOLL
Artwork in the bathrooms
"Foreign and yet real - alienation of photographic realities"
Elke Boll was born in Swabia, but calls the big city on the Rhine her home. This is where she spent her formative years and where she still lives and works today.
In the first 50 years of her life, she occupied herself with the logical world of mathematics, EDP and robotics. Along the way, she was always involved in photography until 2013, when the opportunity arose to study art with a focus on photography at the then newly founded HBK Essen. Since then, she has tried to explain the illogical side of the world through art. Since graduating with a bachelor's degree in 2017, she sees herself as a professional mediator between the two worlds.
Her digital photomontages show images that make the known and familiar of the original photography seem strange, unexpected and incomprehensible. Image content from the real past questions what is seen and remembered. Even if image contents want to be grasped quickly in today's world, one should take time for her art, occupy oneself with what is depicted for a longer time. In the process
the question of how to perceive her alienated images. For only in this way can art permanently become a thought that also leaves a trace in the world.
Again and again she deals with the theme of water. Floods as a possible consequence of global warming are well known to the residents living directly on the Rhine. This is also how the original photographs for the series AUENLANDSCHAFT were taken in the north of Cologne, as she is often on the move in and around Cologne with her camera. She then digitally reduces the motifs to their minimal colour information. Nevertheless, the motif "landscape" is recognisable, because the appearance of landscapes is well anchored in our memory, even if perception is more difficult in the pictures of this series.
