DASS IN MIR EINE SEHNSUCHT ERWACHT
NICO RANDEL & CAMILLO GREWE
(KUNSTHAUS KAT18)
Nico Randel’s work is characterized by personal stories and comments, which he translates into scripts, stage designs, storyboards, lettering and performances. Especially his typefaces seem like verbatim moods of the artist. Black slogans and comments on a white background testify to Randel’s artistic directness and the humor with which he confronts our society’s issues.
In September 2022 Nico Randel used the Goldstein Galerie in Frankfurt a. M. as a studio together with Cologne-based artist Camillo Grewe, and dedicated himself to the overarching theme of “Über das Arbeiten” (About Working). As part of the residency at Atelier Goldstein, the video diary “Alles im Lot!” was created, in which both artists reflect on the theme of “work” in film.
The titular installation “Dass in mir eine Sehnsucht erwacht” (2021) is also the result of an artistic exchange between Nico Randel and Camillo Grewe. The work centers on a long-term project by Nico Randel, in which he uses different approaches to work on a story about a father-son relationship. “In the exhibition by Camillo and me, you see a kind of storyboard made of papier-mâché models. It’s for an animated film about people and lions that I’m going to create in the future. It’s about a story where a lion son is looking for his father.” (Nico Randel)
Randel translated the story as a script, an audio book, in paintings and drawings, and sculptural models in which he depicts the story’s settings in papier-mâché. He then arranges the models on shelves in his studio. Following this, Camillo Grewe has developed a room within a room that replicates this situation. Randel’s papier-mâché models are thus presented as a storyboard in a walk-in installation.
Nico Randel (* 1987) is an artist at Kunsthaus KAT18, an art space with studios, a project room and a gallery with coffee bar. Here artistic and cultural processes take place with the aim of improving the living conditions of the the studio community’s artists in society.
