New Thoughts, Old Forms

MAY 08 – JULY 18, 2010

OPENING: FRIDAY, MAY 07, 2010, 7 PM

Maria Loboda’s first institutional solo exhibition has as its centre the portrait of a room styled by wall-ornaments and obscure objects alongside architectural alterations. This staging, which also includes the inner courtyard of the Society of Arts, stresses the psychological meaning of spaces and objects. The exhibition, »New thoughts, old forms«, is inspired by the early 20th century creative reform movement. And with it, Loboda (*1979 in Krakow) also takes up the regional significance of textile-production in Bielefeld.

Maria Loboda’s work allows us to make wide-ranging links to literature, music and art, but also to mysticism and to folk-beliefs. A fundamental interest in translating language and knowledge into single objects and special ensembles runs right through her work. For Loboda the material world around us is a cosmos of signs. She understands every material thing as the result of a cultural process or of an aesthetic concept. In many cases, she is, as an artist, motivated by a search for this dynamic spirit of things, for their unconscious symbolism and poetic power. These characteristics can dwell in ways of thinking, in things and spaces equally. An essential part of his artistic strategy corresponds to the principle of collage and consists of selecting individual elements and assembling them into a new whole. It is, above all, found elements that are combined with her own objects. Loboda does not focus thematically on any particular epoch, but, like a researcher, she illuminates a specific period, like, for example, Joseph Haydn’s concept of chamber music, the significance of the Victorian language of flowers or the symbols of occultism and magic. Loboda investigates the question as to how past intellectual history affects objects and how these can be made material today. With that, documentary-historical space becomes space conceived and experienced here and now.

Maria Loboda lives and works in Berlin. She finished her studies under Prof. Mark Leckey at the Städelschule Academy of the Plastic Arts in Frankfurt am Main. Loboda received studio scholarships from the Kulturstiftung der Dresdner Bank and the Hessische Kulturstiftung. She has already participated in numerous international group exhibitions, most recently at the 2nd Athens Biennale (2009), »The Long Dark« (International 3 Manchester, England, 2009) and  »The Great Transformation« at the Frankfurt Society of Arts (2008). Last year, Maria Loboda was represented in the Galerie Schleicher+Lange (Paris) with her first solo presentation.

The exhibition is kindly supported by DELIUS GmbH.